Using the Dynamic Appraisal of Situational Aggression (DASA) to assess the impact of unit atmosphere on violence risk assessment.

What Is Known On The Subject: Research suggests that the Dynamic Appraisal of Situational Aggression (DASA) is a useful risk assessment instrument to identify individuals who might be at risk of aggression in mental health inpatient units. Although, risk assessment research has typically focused on an individual's risk of aggression, recent research has begun exploring whether the DASA could be used to assess the likelihood that a group of patients would be aggressive.

What The Paper Adds To Existing Knowledge: While the DASA was useful for assessing whether an individual was likely to be aggressive, the group average score was not a useful indicator for the likelihood of aggression once the individual DASA score was taken into consideration.

Investigating the dynamic nature of multiple risk assessment instruments in a forensic mental health hospital.

Readministration of multiple risk assessment instruments to determine the risk of aggression over the short, medium, and long term is common practice in many forensic mental health settings. Justification for the repeated administration and use of multiple instruments is based on purported differences in discriminative validity of risk factors according to whether they are characterized as static, stable, or acute, and the composition of these tools, in terms of the relative balance of different types of risk factors, which can impact the discriminative validity of these instruments over different follow-up periods. However, research has yet to determine whether the use of multiple and repeated administration of risk assessment instruments improves identification of risk, and it may be the case that the heavy burden on service providers to administer multiple instruments is unwarranted.

Evaluating the legal assumptions of Victoria's from a psychological perspective.

The was introduced in Victoria to decrease recidivism and aid in future investigations and prosecutions. This article reviews literature to evaluate four assumptions inherent to the Act: (a) sexual offenders are more dangerous than non-sexual offenders; (b) sexual offenders who target children are more dangerous than those who target adults; (c) recidivism risk can be accurately assessed for sexual offenders who target adults; and (d) the Act is a useful tool for investigations and prosecutions. The findings suggest that there is little evidence that supports the assumptions.