Psychiatr News July 7, 2006
Volume 41, Number 13, page 29
© 2006 American Psychiatric Association
Can Treatment Prevent Violence?
While findings from the CATIE study on violence cannot be disputed—3
percent to 6 percent of people with schizophrenia in the sample engaged in
serious violence in the six months before a baseline interview (see article
above)—the issue of how those findings should be applied to people with
serious mental illness is a divisive one.
Treatment Advocacy Center Director Mary Zdanowicz, J.D., and Bazelon Center
for Mental Health Law Director Robert Bernstein, Ph.D., agreed that the study
is important because it sheds light on the correlates of violence among people
with schizophrenia.
But while Zdanowicz believes that the findings should support laws that
mandate treatment for people who are a danger to themselves or others,
Bernstein does not.
The Treatment Advocacy Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to
eliminating barriers to treatment; it advocates for assisted outpatient
treatment. The Bazelon Center describes its mission as protecting and
advancing the rights of people with mental illness.
"This study isn't designed to create an argument for legal
intervention," Bernstein told Psychiatric News. Since the CATIE
study does not establish a causal relationship between violence and patients'
clinical characteristics, "any attempt to jump to a conclusion that we
can prevent violence is preposterous," he said.
Zdanowicz noted that the study "helps us better understand the
specific array of symptoms that increase the risk of violence," and said
the study provides clinicians and others with "the hope of identifying
who is at risk for violence and managing that risk by ensuring that they get
the treatment they need."
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