Mental Disorder, Violence, and Gender - Literature review Example

From the title “Mental Disorder, Violence, and Gender” it can be revealed that the paper is about the discussion of any significant topic related to mental disorder gender, and violence. But this domain is vast and specifically, no idea about any particular topic can be derived from the title. So an ambiguity arises in the title entitlement by the authors. I think a more specific title would have explored a strong statement.

Abstract: From the abstract, a clearer idea can be gathered. It states that many recent studies have been focused on the study of comparable rates of violence among genders with mental disorders. The authors state that their study deviates from this comparative study and rather focuses on the relationship between variables like violence and gender. In this section, the methodology of the paper has been mentioned with clarity. In this section, it has been mentioned clearly that the study was made on the patients from acute psychiatric wards and they were interviewed 5 times over a span of one year along with their discharge into the community. Further mentioned was the application of the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study (Robbins, Monahan and Silver, 2003, p. 561).

Introduction: In the paper, the authors have presented a brief literature review regarding gender differences and community violence by citing studies of authors in the recent past. The hypothesis which the authors exhibit in order to validate is the assessment of gender differences in violence among people with mental disorders. Along with that they also mentioned reasons why their studies were improved than the previous literature (Robbins, Monahan and Silver, 2003, p. 563).

Method: For examining the relationship between gender and violence data were analyzed from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study. The patients from acute psychiatric wards were interviewed 5 times in the year over which they were discharged to the community (Robbins, Monahan, and Silver, 2003, p. 562). Subsections in the method have been provided with interviews by a research interviewer and that of a research clinician. The strength of this method lies in the fact that it is a multisite study designed for assessing the risk factors for the violent factors embedded within the psychiatric patients.

Results: The results showed differences between men and women with respect to violence committed. The prevalence of the violence over 1 year was more or less similar for both the genders of discharged patients. The men were more inclined towards drinking or using street drugs than the women and the men were more likely to be arrested after committing violent acts. It was seen that the women’s violence target was family members. The data were presented in percentage forms gender-wise which led to a clear representation of the results (Robbins, Monahan and Silver, 2003, p. 563).

Discussion: The research findings stated that men are no more likely to be violent than the women over the course of 1 year which has differed dramatically from the results found in the literature of criminology. These were backed by data and future references for practices were also discussed (Robbins, Monahan and Silver 2003, p. 563).
Overall: Overall, the study highlighted the association between the violence and gender differences. It reflected that the implications of the findings of the lack of differences in rates highlighted the need for the clinicians for integrating gender of the patient in a different way in times of discharge decisions. For eliminating the bias that patients committed multiple violence acts reassessment of data were made thoroughly. Read More