Development of a clinical instrument to record sexual aggression in an inpatient psychiatric setting

Abstract

While there are a number of instruments that assess historical factors related to sexual aggression for the purposes of risk assessment, there is a notable absence of measures that assess change in ongoing, sexually aggressive behaviours engaged in by people who reside in psychiatric hospitals. The purpose of this report is to describe the development and implementation of a clinical instrument designed to facilitate the recording of sexually aggressive behaviours in an inpatient psychiatric setting. The scale was used with a sample of 18 male inpatients with severe mental illness who resided in a large state psychiatric hospital. The findings revealed that two individuals (11%) engaged in at least 57 incidents of sexually aggressive behaviour within a four-month time-frame. Medical record reviews revealed that most of these behaviours were not otherwise noted. The clinical implications, potential utility with other populations and limitations of this report are discussed.