Key message

There is a lack of knowledge concerning the impact of involuntary treatment in psychiatric services and the link, if any, between involuntary treatment and violent incidents. The objective of this report is to map the available research on violent incidents carried out by people with severe mental illness who have experienced involuntary treatment in psychiatric services.

A systematic literature search with sorting is a type of knowledge synthesis that presents an overview of existing literature on a specific question. The included publications are sorted into categories and listed. We included 52 references mainly about patiens in involuntary outpatient or inpatient treatment or hospitalisation. We identified the following:

• 8 evidence syntheses and 44 primary studies
• Over half of the primary studies were published more than 10 years ago
• Most of the publications did not investigate people with a specific diagnosis but, included people with different severe mental illnesses
• 25 publications researched violence committed in the community
• 22 publications researched violence committed in institutions
• 13 studies were identified as especially relevant in cooperation with the commissioner and were mapped in more detail.

The results are presented in this report and through the digital visualisation tool EPPI-Vis: https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/eppi-vis/login/open?webdbid=316