Citation

Littlechild B. Front. Psychiatry 2022; 13: e935821.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Frontiers Media)

DOI

10.3389/fpsyt.2022.935821

PMID

36016972

PMCID

PMC9396346

Abstract

Interpersonal violence is widespread within societies and has historically often been a neglected issue in policy, law and practice. Avoidance of acknowledging and dealing with the causes and effects of such interpersonal violence in many different settings in societies across the globe has far too often been the case. This includes within family relationships where abuse and violence, with such violence frequently still taking place. It also includes institutional settings, where there also is current evidence of violence. A number of countries and agencies around the world are now more seriously starting to confront the difficult task of educating individuals and agencies within their societies, with lawmakers and policy makers now in some areas starting to deal with and attempting to reduce this problem. It can be argued that this is partly due to the bravery of survivors of such violence and professionals in the field coming forward to air their experiences and concerns, and their voices being heard through the media, politicians, and researchers, which has highlighted evidence from survivors, campaigners and researchers giving attention to the enormous scale and severity of the problem in mental health, learning disability, and children and young people's institutions, for example. In recent years, there has been more attention paid to this area, not least of all within mental health settings and provision, particularly in inpatient mental health settings, although there is less evidence about this in relation to community settings. The scope and meaning of violence and aggression in this arena covers abuse, aggression and violence in interpersonal relationships. We know that the effects of such behaviors in mental health settings can negatively affect the health, wellbeing, and feelings of security and safety of both service users and staff, making this an important area to explore further, examining ways to not only reduce the number of such incidents, by way of greater understanding of the causes of such violence and aggression, from the basis of pharmacological, psychosocial and organizational causes of and responses to such behaviors...

Language: en

Keywords

mental health; aggression; violence; causes; effects; treatment