GOING IN STRONG - CONFRONTIVE COPING BY STAFF

Violence is an important source of stress for staff working in forensi c psychiatric settings and strategies adopted for coping with this str ess may influence staff behaviour towards patients. To examine this po ssibility, 24 staff in a psychiatric hospital were interviewed twice, first 3 days and then 2 weeks after being physically assaulted by a pa tient. Measures of anxiety and coping were taken at each interview. Es cape/avoidance and confrontive coping were used by a third or more of subjects and both strategies may be associated with behaviours which h ave been implicated in the causation of aggression. Confrontive coping was also associated with an increase in anxiety in the short term.