Psychiatry and clinical neurosciences
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Psychiatry Clin. Neurosci. · Jun 2008
Predictors of violent behavior among acute psychiatric patients: clinical study.
Violence risk prediction is a priority issue for clinicians working with mentally disordered offenders. The aim of the present study was to determine violence risk factors in acute psychiatric inpatients. ⋯ A comprehensive evaluation of the history of past aggressive behavior and psychopathological variables has important implications for the prediction of violence in psychiatric settings.
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Psychiatry Clin. Neurosci. · Jun 2008
Comparative StudyBeliefs about the genetics of suicide in Canadian students: cross-language validation of the Beliefs in the Inheritance of Risk Factors for Suicide Scale (BIRFSS).
The genetics underlying suicidal behavior is becoming increasingly recognized and investigated. Convergent evidence towards this end has emerged from numerous research strategies (adoption, family, genome-scan, geographic, immigrant, molecular genetic, surname, and twin studies of suicide). The topic-related mental-health literacy (i.e. knowledge and beliefs) of professionals and laypersons, however, may lag behind this research progress, and data on this question are scant. The aim of the present study was therefore to further validate, in a cross-language setting, the novel 22-item Beliefs in the Inheritance of Risk Factors for Suicide Scale (BIRFSS), originally developed in German, which assesses beliefs about the genetics of suicide. ⋯ For the Canadian sample, BIRFSS scores were positively related to overall and specific knowledge about suicide and general beliefs about genetic determinism (convergent validity), whereas they were not (or only trivially) related to the Big Five personality dimensions, lay theories of suicide, locus of control, social desirability, religiosity, and political orientation (discriminant validity), and to several key demographic variables. Supplemental findings, study limitations, application possibilities, user recommendations, and avenues for further inquiry are discussed.