Psychotic symptoms and violence toward others - a literature review of some preliminary findings Part 1. Delusions

The main scope of this paper is to delineate some findings from a review of the literature concerning the possible impact of delusions on violence toward others by psychiatric patients. According to this review, studies on a possible association between delusions and increased risk of violence are scarce, but steadily growing, and have shown some interesting results. However, since delusions are also common in nonviolent psychiatric patients, there is emerging evidence that our attention should be directed to specific hallmarks of delusions that indicate an increased risk of violence. Among the main findings of the present review are: the number of empirical studies were surprisingly low; about 80% of the studies were conducted during the last 8 years; and less than one third of the studies used a prospective design. Further findings were that persecutory delusions appear to increase risk of violence in some patients; co-occurence of persecutory delusions and emotional distress may increase risk of violence; and there is limited but tentative support to the existence of an association between ymptoms of perceived threat and internal control override (TCO) and violence. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.