Identification of triggers for aggression against staff in multiple forensic psychiatric units
The purpose of this research was to identify prompting observable behaviours that preceded patients’ aggressive behaviour in 14 forensic psychiatric units. A deductive content analysis of 140 aggression incident reports occurring between 2012 and 2017 was done. The results are comparable to those of previous studies: 37,1 % of the incidents analyzed were immediately preceded by staff’s verbal interventions, such as staff’s requests to the patient or staff’s refusal to acquiesce to a patient’s request. In 54 % of the incident reports, a physical contact between staff and patient was the identified trigger for aggression. In less than 9 % of the incidents, no observable trigger could be identified. We discuss our results in reference to an interactional approach to aggression in forensic psychiatry that takes into consideration the treatment environment and the patient’s individual characteristics to suggest concrete intervention strategies that could reduce the risk of aggression..