Trashing Property: Characteristics of Psychiatric Patients Who Engage in Domestic Property Damaging

Abstract

This descriptive record-based study included 75 patients who had engaged in domestic property damaging (DPD) and needed assessment by an urban emergency psychiatric service team in The Netherlands. The DPD patients were compared to 1145 other patients referred because of aggression, suicidality or other reasons. DPD patients were more often diagnosed with a psychotic disorder or a manic episode, had more often a migration background, were less often diagnosed with depression, and had lower GAF scores. There were no differences with respect to personality disorders or substance use. DPD patients were two to six times more likely to be (mostly involuntarily) admitted to a psychiatric department (64%), than the other patient groups (aggression 45%, suicidality 21%, other referral reasons 37%). The findings indicate that DPD patients represent an exclusive group who possibly have more intercultural and communication disadvantages due to less cultural acceptance or lack of knowledge about mental healthcare in the Netherlands.