It’s rare, but a reality is that mental health clients can turn violent. Therefore, clinicians must be aware of some of the risks and be prepared to keep themselves–and their colleagues–safe.
The reality is that there is a moderate elevation in risk of violence for people working with individuals who are experiencing serious mental and emotional disorders. Keep in mind that this elevation is not off the charts, and we should also be careful to not get inappropriately defensive, we should remain safety minded and take necessary measures to mitigate risk to do our part to reduce the risk of violence.
It is important to note that there is evidence that there are particularly increased risks for clinicians early in their training years. This has many factors and may be in part due to the population these clinicians serve, but could also be as a result of not having a safety mindset in clinical practice, which can be developed through experience and training. All clinicians, and especially early career therapists, may be less mindful of risk behaviors, untrained on safety protocols, may be less likely to set appropriate boundaries that could allow for escalated risks and are more likely to work in higher risk settings with higher risk severely impaired populations. With this in mind it is essential that clinical settings, especially those with clinicians in training or early career professionals consider putting procedures and training in place to create a safety oriented mindset, screening process to screen out clients who pose a risk for violence, and provide guidance on how to increase overall clinician and client safety. An ideal risk management protocol will include:
- Risk mitigating screening and initial visit procedures
- Training on a safety mindset
- Training on de-escalation techniques
- A safety minded office layout
- Protocol for managing angry or agitated clients
- Self defense
