Citation

Segal SP, Watson MA, Goldfinger SM, Averbuck DS. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 1988; 45(8): 748-752.

Affiliation

Mental Health and Social Welfare Research Group, School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley 94720.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1988, American Medical Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

3395204

Abstract

Critics of the dangerousness standard for civil commitment contend that there is no professional standard for the evaluation of dangerousness. We used Three Ratings of Involuntary Admissibility, a reliable index of behavioral indicators of danger to self, danger to others, and grave disability, and found that when combined into weighted patterns these indicators predicted disposition decisions of 70 clinicians in five psychiatric emergency rooms over 251 cases. A concurrent measure of perceived dangerousness, Clinician's Global Ratings of patients on these criteria, yielded similar results. We conclude that clinicians in California psychiatric emergency rooms apply a shared concept of dangerousness that can be described in behavioral terms.

Language: en