Workplace violence and insecurity might make psychiatric staff more accepting of coercion

A recent study published in Comprehensive Psychiatry has found that German psychiatric staff members with certain characteristics tend to hold less critical attitudes towards coercive measures in psychiatry. These factors include being older, working in forensic psychiatry, experiencing greater feelings of insecurity, more frequent exposure to physical violence, higher emotional burden from verbal violence, and using coercive measures more often.

The study, conducted as part of the AttCo project, surveyed 1,585 psychiatric staff members from across Germany. Coercive measures in psychiatry refer to interventions used without a patient's consent when clinicians deem them necessary to prevent serious harm or enable essential treatment, such as involuntary hospitalization, physical restraint, seclusion, forced medication, and other forms of compulsory treatment.

The researchers found that older staff members, those in forensic psychiatry, those with greater feelings of insecurity, those exposed to more physical violence, those with a greater emotional burden from verbal violence, and those who used coercive measures more frequently were less critical of these interventions. The study, authored by Klara Czernin, Anna Oster, Lieselotte Mahler, and Josef Severin Baumgartner, highlights the importance of improving violence prevention and de-escalation strategies, as well as providing individualized support for staff following distressing incidents to reduce feelings of insecurity.

However, the study's findings should not be taken as causal evidence, as it was based on self-reported data and could be subject to reporting bias.