Assaults on staff by psychiatric patients in community residences

Raymond B. Flannery Jr., Massachusetts Department of Mental Health
William H. Fisher, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Andrew P. Walker, Massachusetts Department of Mental Health
Karolina Kolodziej
Michael J. Spillane, Massachusetts Department of Mental Health

Abstract

The study examined assaultive behavior directed toward staff of community-based residential facilities by patients who had been discharged to these facilities from Massachusetts state psychiatric hospitals in the early 1990s. Observed rates of assault declined by 61 percent over a six-and-a-half-year period. Early in the study period, male patients were more likely than female patients to be assaultive, but men and women had similar rates of assaultiveness later in the study period, after they had been in residential placements for several years. The most common diagnosis among assaultive patients was schizophrenia.