Physical aggression against psychiatric inpatients by family members and partners

Abstract

The rate of recent violence against newly admitted psychiatric inpatients by partners and family members was assessed. Sixty-nine patients who had a partner or contact with a family member participated. A high proportion of respondents reported physical victimization by either their partner (62.8 percent) or a family member (45.8 percent). Physical abuse was rarely documented in medical charts, and most respondents did not consider the violence they experienced to be abuse. Almost half of the respondents met criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder in response to their physical victimization. The findings underscore the importance of assessing recent partner and family violence in the routine evaluation of psychiatric patients.