title: The classification of violence risk.
abstract: The Classification of Violence Risk (COVR) is an interactive software program designed to estimate the risk that a person hospitalized for mental disorder will be violent to others. The software leads the evaluator through a chart review and a brief interview with the patient. At the end of this interview, the software generates a report that contains a statistically valid estimate of the patient's violence risk-ranging from a 1% to a 76% likelihood of violence-including the confidence interval for that estimate, and a list of the risk factors that the program took into account to produce the estimate. In this article, the development of the COVR software is described and several issues that arise in its administration are discussed.
authors.affiliation: School of Law, University of Virginia, 580 Massie Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903-1789, USA. jmonahan@virginia.edu
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Monahan
authors.forename: Henry J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Steadman
authors.forename: Paul S
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Appelbaum
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Grisso
authors.forename: Edward P
authors.initials: EP
authors.lastname: Mulvey
authors.forename: Loren H
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Roth
authors.forename: Pamela Clark
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Robbins
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Banks
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Silver
mesh_terms: D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000145:classification* / Q000175:diagnosis; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D010351:Patient Discharge; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D012984:Software; D012985:Software Design; D014754:Violence / Q000145:classification* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*