The management of potentially dangerous patients in the community

With the accelerating drive towards the running down of large psychiatric hospitals and the trend towards the care and management of psychiatrically ill people in the community, it is inevitable that a small proportion of these people will be unable to cope with this change. Some patients may have a long history of violent behaviour which has been coped with in hospital. Others may have been able to cope within the ‘asylum’ environment but, when placed in a community which is little better able to cope with them than they are with it, regress to violent behaviour when faced with unaccustomed stress.