Antecedents to episodes involving aggression and coercion in in-patient mental health settings: scoping review

BACKGROUND: Preventing episodes involving aggression and reducing coercive measures are important goals in in-patient mental health settings. Antecedents may provide insight into how episodes are described to develop. However, most studies reflect staff perspectives, and often describe and temporally specify antecedents inconsistently. AIMS: This scoping review mapped reported antecedents to episodes involving aggression and episodes involving coercive measures, and identified which appeared shared or specific to either phenomenon. METHOD: This review followed the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews guidance, and included 39 studies from systematic searches across Ovid Medline, APA PsycINFO and Scopus. Reported antecedents were extracted, standardised and mapped to six analytical domains. RESULTS: The review mapped 240 antecedents, many of which appeared shared across the phenomena. Patient studies emphasised experiences of restrictive care, loss of autonomy and poor interaction quality. Staff studies emphasised immediate, observable situations related to risk management, such as patient aggression, denied requests and interpersonal conflict. Most studies did not specify the temporal boundaries of antecedents. CONCLUSIONS: The perspectives represented in studies and the ways antecedents are conceptualised influence which antecedents become visible in the literature. Overlapping antecedents indicate that episodes involving aggression and episodes involving coercive measures are often described as part of the same escalation process, although patient and staff studies seem to highlight different stages. Prevention efforts therefore require attention to the entire trajectory, and to the point at which staff perceive intervention as necessary. Future studies should incorporate both perspectives, prioritise patient involvement, and more clearly define and temporally specify antecedents.