Emergency Civil Commitment: Predicting Hospital Violence from Behavior in the Community

The authors investigated whether violence to others in the community relates to violent behavior in the first 72 hours of hospitalization. They reviewed emergency room records, and they concurrently reviewed and monitored hospital violence for 100 patients committed to a state hospital. Patients committed after assaults on others were more likely than other patients to threaten or assault others during the first day of hospitalization, but not later. Independent of the reason for commitment, manic patients were more likely to be violent. The implications of these results for the validity of psychiatrists’ predictions of violence are discussed.