Hospital & community psychiatry
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Hosp Community Psychiatry · Dec 1991
The relationship of crowding and aggressive behavior on a psychiatric intensive care unit.
During a 25-week period, all incidents of aggressive behavior in a 19-bed psychiatric acute care unit were systematically recorded using the Staff Observation Aggression Scale. Forty-seven of the 163 patients admitted to the unit were aggressive on 119 occasions. ⋯ The patients were predominantly aggressive without visible provocation or were provoked by staff's denying a request. An increased number of patients on the ward significantly increased the likelihood of aggressive behavior, especially by patients with schizophrenia or schizophreniform disorder.