Nursing staff responses to violent events in closed psychiatric wards: A comparison between attributional and cognitive-neo-associationistic analyses

Dorit Apel, Yoram Bar-Tal*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper examines the behavioural response of nursing staff in psychiatric wards to a patient's violent behaviour towards a staff member as a function of whether the patient's behaviour was presented as arbitrary or not. The participants were 133 nurses. They were given two vignettes describing an arbitrary and a non-arbitrary behaviour of a patient and were asked what the typical response in their ward to each event would be. The results show that when the patient's behaviour was perceived as arbitrary, staff was believed to respond with a therapeutic reaction more frequently than to non-arbitrary behaviour. Moreover, participants' professional characteristics played a greater role in the non-arbitrary scenario. It is suggested that a therapeutic response to a patient's violent behaviour requires a recognition that the patient's behaviour is consistent with his/her role as a patient. The implication of these results for Berkowitz & Heimer's (1989) cognitive-neo-associationistic analysis is discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)509-521
Number of pages13
JournalBritish Journal of Social Psychology
Volume35
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1996

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Nursing staff responses to violent events in closed psychiatric wards: A comparison between attributional and cognitive-neo-associationistic analyses'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this