A study of violence against mental health professionals

Abstract

Background: Due to mental illness, a person is unable to control himself and causes harm to his own life or the lives of others or society is considered a socially dangerous actions of the mentally ill person. In the study of European Union during a year 50% of mental health care workers, in USA 40-50% of mental health care workers, in China 83.4% of mental health care workers and 84.2% of nurses were exposed to a verbal and physical socially dangerous actions. However, in our country, there is not enough research on socially dangerous acts of nurses and nurse assistants who are victims and its preventive measures, which are the reason for conducting this study. Aim: This study aims to investigate the exposure of workers, who work in NCMH, to the violence of psychiatric patients, to determine its influencing factors, and to study issues for preventing violence. Materials and Methods: The study design was a hospital-based cross-sectional, survey and qualitative research design, which was collected within workers of NCMH. Ethical approval for this study was reviewed and approved by the Research Ethics Review Committee of MNUMS (April 29, 2022; 2022/3-04). Results: In our study participated 67 (41.6%) nurses and 94 (58.4%) assistant nurses aged 24-59, 29 (18%) were male and 132 (82%) were female. The mean age of participants 40.76±8.33. They have worked in NCMH 1-39 years and the mean working year was 12.7±8.28. 59% of the participants works in the main clinic or wards of psychotic patients, meanwhile 36% (n=58) in special clinics and 5% (n=8) in the clinic of forensic psychiatry. 87.6% (n=141) of the respondents were exposed to violence and 67.1% were exposed more than 2 times. We identified the prevention requirements of violence at three levels: policy development, organizational and individual level. They answered that there is a need to regulize training on the violent behaviors of psychiatric patients, the use of physical restraint, and the rights of people with mental illness, and to improve workplace safety, increase human resources, and provide qualified beds and ropes. Conclusion: The majority of the nurses, assistant nurses were exposed to the violence of the psychiatric patients and received medical help due to physical and psychological disorders. They even temporarily lost their working ability for a while. In order to prevent the violence of psychiatric patients, it is necessary to increase human resources, take into account the gender balance, regularize workplace training, ensure workplace safety, and provide the necessary tools to use restraint methods.