title: The evolution of violence risk assessment.
abstract: Many instruments have been published in recent years to improve the ability of mental health clinicians to estimate the likelihood that an individual will behave violently toward others. Increasingly, these instruments are being applied in response to laws that require specialized risk assessments. In this review, we present a framework that goes beyond the "clinical" and "actuarial" dichotomy to describe a continuum of structured approaches to risk assessment. Despite differences among them, there is little evidence that one instrument predicts violence better than another. We believe that these group-based instruments are useful for assessing an individual's risk, and that the instrument should be chosen based on the purpose of the assessment.
authors.affiliation: 1School of Law,University of Virginia,Charlottesville,Virginia,USA.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Monahan
authors.affiliation: 2School of Social Welfare & Goldman School of Public Policy,University of California-Berkeley,Berkeley,California,USA.
authors.forename: Jennifer L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Skeem
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology; D003617:Dangerous Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D012307:Risk Factors; D014754:Violence / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*