Characteristics of international assaultive psychiatric patients: review of published findings, 2000-2012.

In international reviews of psychiatric inpatient violence, one study of all types of patient violence found hostility, involuntary admission, and longer hospital stays associated with violence. A second study of comparison-group papers of patient assaults found younger males with schizophrenia, past violence, and substance abuse assaultive. The present review of raw assault data studies assessed characteristics of assaultive patients worldwide. It was hypothesized that patients with schizophrenia would present greatest assault risk. There were three analyses: International/no American studies (reviewed earlier), European studies, and merged International/American studies. Results revealed that male and female patients with schizophrenia, affective disorders, personality disorders, and other diagnoses presented greatest worldwide risk. Results partially support earlier findings. Given that individual institutional studies in this review reported significant assailant characteristics, a second finding is the absence of most of these institutional characteristics in this international review. Possible explanations for findings and a detailed methodological review are presented.

Characteristics of American assaultive psychiatric patients: review of published findings, 2000-2012.

Previous reviews of the literature from 1976 to 2000 documented two categories of assaultive psychiatric patients: (1) male patients with schizophrenic illness and histories of violence toward others and substance use disorder and (2) male/female patients with personality disorders and histories of violence toward others, personal victimization, and substance use. The present study reviewed the published findings on American assaultive patients from 2000 to 2012. The present findings partially supported the earlier findings in that patients with schizophrenic illness continued to present the greatest risk for assault. However, personality disordered patients were not equal in assault risk to patients with affective disorders. Possible explanations for these findings and a detailed methodological review are presented.

Attention impairment in electrooculographic control of computer functions.

Previous work has demonstrated that computer functions can be controlled by eye movements recorded with the use of vertical and horizontal electrooculography (EOG). In the present study, an attempt was made to show that this newly developed task could be disrupted by dual-task demands and, therefore, would follow conventional principles of multiple-task performance. Fifteen participants performed the eye movement task under two conditions-control and divided attention. It was found that the time to process letters was significantly longer in the divided attention condition than in the control condition and that males and females showed comparable performance decrements in the divided attention condition. A task that utilizes eye movements to control computer operations for syntax construction follows the same principles of limited resource allocation of attention as more conventional perceptual-motor tasks such as reaction time and manual control of computer functions.