Aggressive behavior during the first 24 hours of psychiatric admission

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association between aggression in the first 24 hours after admission and severity of psychopathology in psychiatric inpatients.METHODS: This cross-sectional study included psychiatric patients admitted to Hospital Universitário de Santa Maria, in Santa Maria, southern Brazil, from August 2012 to January 2013. At their arrival at the hospital, patients were interviewed to fill in the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) form, and any aggressive episodes in the first 24 hours after admission were recorded using the Overt Aggression Scale (OAS). The Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare patients according to aggressiveness: aggressive versus non-aggressive, hostile versus violent, and aggressive against others only versus self-aggressive.RESULTS: The sample was composed of 110 patients. Aggressive patients in general had higher BPRS total scores (p = 0.002) and individual component scores, and their results showed more activation (p < 0.001) and thinking disorders (p = 0.009), but less anxious-depression (p = 0.008). Violent patients had more severe psychomotor agitation (p = 0.027), hallucinations (p = 0.017) and unusual thought content (p = 0.020). Additionally, self-aggressive patients had more disorientation (p = 0.011) and conceptual disorganization (p = 0.007).CONCLUSIONS: Aggression in psychiatric patients in the first 24 hours after admission is associated with severity of psychopathology, and severity increases with severity of patient psychosis and agitation.