Citation

Thornicroft G. Lancet Public Health 2020; 5(2): e72-e73.

Affiliation

Centre for Global Mental Health and Centre for Implementation Science, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London SE5 8AF, UK. Electronic address: graham.thornicroft@kcl.ac.uk.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30002-5

PMID

32032557

Abstract

People with mental illness are much more often the victims of violence rather than the perpetrators. However, people with some types of mental disorder are more likely to be violent than others in the general population, a fact that is uncomfortable for many in the mental health sector. While there is little evidence to suggest that people with mental illness in general (usually those with diagnoses of depression or anxiety disorders) have any increased risk of perpetrating violence compared with the general population,1 higher rates of violence perpetration have been identified among people with particular types of severe mental illness, namely schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. These rates are moderately raised compared with the general population, with an important caveat: people with triple morbidity (ie, individuals with severe mental illness and substance use disorder and antisocial personality disorder) are substantially more likely to be violent than people with severe mental illness alone

Language: en