Risks Factors of Violence Among Psychiatric Inpatients: Focusing on Substance Abuse and Environmental Violence

Violence is a common issue in psychiatry and has multiple determiners. Considering psychiatric inpatients, the main factors which appear linked to violence are male gender, diagnosis of schizophrenia, the symptom severity, the history of violence and substance abuse. The comparative importance of these risk factors of violence is to be determined with accuracy in order to better understand the phenomena of violence and to prevent it. Nevertheless, recent meta-analyses showed that the effect sizes of the strongest clinical indicators of aggression are statistically small and didn’t explain all the aggressive behaviors. In a previous study, we showed that the violence in the psychotic patient’s neighbourhood could represent an important risk factor of inpatient violence and should thus be taken into account.