A survey of five types of dangerous behavior among chronic psychiatric patients.

Dangerous behavior by psychiatric patients during treatment is a concern of staff and other patients surrounding them. Research in this area usually has focused on one type of dangerous behavior at a time, for example, selfinjury,I-:1 assault,Hi or firesetting.H' There have been few studies that assess the occurrence of more than one type of dangerous behavior in the same patient population. My previous studies have compared assaultive patients to suicidal patients 10 and suicidal patients with assaultive behavior to suicidal patients without assaultive behavior." However. these studies have involved assault and suicide attempts taking place just before admission to the hospital not while the patients were in the hospital. Surveys of mUltiple types of dangerous behavior in hospitals have used incident reports, 12.1:1 which are suspect in terms of underreporting. 14 My survey is the first of its kind to assess directly the frequency of five types of dangerous behavior among patients residing in state hospitals. It will describe how these behaviors differ in terms of patient characteristics as well as the need for emergency control measures in hospitals.