Clinical assessment of violence from inpatient records: A comparison of individual and aggregate decision making across risk strategies

Abstract

Although clinical decisions of future risk are often criticized for being less accurate than actuarial predictions, clinical realities dictate their continued use. The current study assessed mental health professionals’ ability to make clinical decisions in an analog context while relying on the data from a previous in-vivo study (Zeiss, Tanke, Fenn, & Yesavage, 1996) in which future violence had been successfully predicted. Results of this study indicate that across multiple violence risk prediction strategies, individual clinicians consistently demonstrated poor ability to predict violence but are much improved when aggregated as “group” decision makers. In addition, clinicians showed consistent ability to assess the severity of future violence accurately. © 2004 International Association of Forensic Mental Health Services.