The American journal of psychiatry
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The authors evaluated characteristics of patients whom clinicians accurately assessed as being at high or low risk for violence and patients for whom clinicians overestimated or underestimated the risk. ⋯ While clinicians can accurately classify the potential for violence in the majority of patients at admission, systematic errors characterize inaccurate assessments of the risk. Awareness of these patterns may help improve assessment of the risk of violence in clinical practice.