European violence risk and mental disorders (EU-VIORMED): a multi-centre prospective cohort study protocol

Abstract

BackgroundThe link between schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) and violence is a core issue for most forensic psychiatric services. However, the drivers of violence in this population remain unclear, and, to date tools to predict violence risk have a range of limitations. Perhaps because of this uncertainty about the nature of violence risk, treatment programmes and care pathways for mentally disordered offenders vary substantially across the European Union, and differences in legal and policy frameworks are highly relevant.MethodsThe three-year EU-VIORMED project (Grant Number PP-2-3-2016, November 2017–October 2020) involves forensic centres in Italy, Austria, Germany, Poland, and the U.K. It aims to: (a) identify and compare violence risk factors, clinical needs, and decision making capacity in violent (N = 200, “cases”) and nonviolent patients with SSD (N = 200; “controls”) using a case-control design; (b) test the predictive validity of the HCR-20v3, OxMIS and FoVOx among cases alone (N = 200), using a prospective cohort study; and (c) compare forensic-psychiatric care pathways across the EU, in a continent wide service mapping study.DiscussionData collection started in September 2018 and continues. By September 2019, 333 participants have been enrolled (201 cases and 132 controls were recruited). Experts from 23 countries provided data for the service mapping exercise.Trial registrationRetrospectively registered on January 2, 2019 as researchregistry4604 January 2, 2019

Neurocognition and social cognition in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders with and without a history of violence: results of a multinational European study

“…EU-VIORMED is a European multicentre observational study [ 21 ]. The field work was conducted in five European countries: Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom.…”

“…The power analysis and the computation of the sample size had been exhaustively described in the study protocol [ 21 ].…”

Aggressive Behavior and Psychiatric Inpatients: a Narrative Review of the Literature with a Focus on the European Experience

“…According to several studies [62][63][64][65], having a mental disease with severe symptoms is associated with a higher probability of any form of aggressive behavior. Recent investigations identify schizophrenia, cognitive impairment, anxiety, acute stress reaction, suicidal ideation, along with poor insight, personality disorders, impulsivity, and psychopathy as the clinical factors with the strongest empirical evidence for association with violence [66,67].…”

DAily time use, Physical Activity, quality of care and interpersonal relationships in patients with Schizophrenia spectrum disorders (DiAPASon): an Italian multicentre study

“…The evaluation process includes many tools and will take some time to be completed, especially for the participants who will be enrolled in all three studies. Although this may lead to high refusal rates, previous experience with health services research carried out in Italy has shown that, due to the high degree of collaboration between staff and patients, refusal rates can be kept very low [43,44,89,90].…”