Criminology Research Council grant ; (16/02-03)
The aim of this study was to determine the lifetime rates of victimisation including physical and sexual assaults in a population of psychiatric inpatients, and to examine the associations between a history of victimisation and adverse outcomes. The study highlights that psychiatric patients are not just perpetrators of violence but also the victims of such acts, and suggest that those with a mental illness are highly vulnerable to physical and sexual assault. The findings in this study highlight the adverse impact which victimisation may have on the resilience of a person who has a mental illness and provide evidence that irrespective of whether victimisation is aetiologically related to mental illness, such experiences may have a deleterious effect on the longitudinal natural history of mental illness. The findings suggest that the social environments of some mentally ill individuals militate against the resolution of chronic psychiatric illness and may in fact lead to recidivism and the subsequent escalation of social and economic costs. In the shift from institutional to community care the adverse effects of the community are seldom discussed. These results highlight the need for careful attention to the nature of the social environment a system considers appropriate for a highly vulnerable and disadvantaged group, the mentally ill.