Assessing risk of interpersonal violence in the mentally ill

Abstract

Mental health professionals regard the assessment of suicide risk as part of normal clinical practice, but most shy away from assessment of risk of interpersonal violence, either doubting that such predictions are possible, or, if possible, are part of their role. In part, this fastidiousness reflects the influence of a consensus which emerged in the 1970s to the effect that there was no substantial relationship between mental illness and violent behaviour. The only basis for risk assessments which remained were those factors in the general population known to be associated with criminality. Even here, however, the accuracy of predictions made by clinicians had been subject to considerable critical scrutiny, which undermined any claims the profession may have had to expertise (Monahan, 1981; Brizer, 1989). There seems to have been wide acceptance that psychiatrists were doubly disabled in the business of predicting violence by having no relevant specialist knowledge and by being poor at applying knowledge gleaned from other disciplines such as criminology.