Economic Deprivation, Not Race, Predisposes Released Mental Patients To Violence

January 30, 2001

University Park, Pa. -- African Americans appear overrepresented among mental patients who commit acts of violence largely because they are overrepresented in the at-risk groups that tend to live in blighted neighborhoods, a Penn State criminologist says.

"White and Black psychiatric patients have an almost equal chance of engaging in violence when they are returned to the same economically deprived and crime-ridden neighborhoods," says Dr. Eric Silver, assistant professor of crime, law and justice and sociology. "Thus, community context, not race, is usually what counts most in predicting violent crime rates among persons with mental disorders. Race is not the critical factor in determining the likelihood of violence among persons released from psychiatric facilities."

Silver's findings are based on a study of 270 patients discharged from the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh. Research subjects were both White and Black between the ages of 18 and 40, diagnosed with one or more of the following conditions: schizophrenia, clinical depression, dysthymia, mania, brief reactive psychosis, delusional disorder, alcohol or drug abuse or dependence, and personality disorder.

The data revealed that the odds of violence for African Americans were almost three times greater than the odds of violence for Whites. However, when the distress level of the discharged patients' neighborhood was factored in, African-Americans were found to be no more likely than Whites to commit violent acts. The reason for the difference is that Blacks tend to live in the worst neighborhoods, Silver explains.

The particular vulnerability of Black mental patients to bad neighborhood conditions can be measured by the fact that, while 33.7 percent of Silver's sample group were Black, none were found in what Silver categorized as "low-disadvantage" neighborhoods. On the other hand, African Americans constituted 27.7 percent of the patients in the "average-disadvantage" neighborhoods and 90.9 percent of the patients in the "high-disadvantage" neighborhoods.

"My analysis focused on violence that occurred during the first 20 weeks of hospital discharge," Silver notes. "I queried subjects, along with their friends and relatives, as to whether the subject had demonstrated any of eight categories of violent behavior in the past 10 weeks. I also examined official arrest and rehospitalization records for evidence of violent behavior during the same time period."

Acts categorized as violent included acts of battery that resulted in physical injury, sexual assaults, assaults that involved the use of a weapon, and threats made with a weapon in hand.

Silver suggests that one action that mental health workers can take to reduce violence by their patients, is to steer them toward living in better neighborhoods at the time of discharge, whenever possible. Another way to decrease violence by psychiatric patients is to locate halfway houses and other living facilities in less disadvantaged neighborhoods, where patients are less likely to become involved in situations that lead to violence.

The Penn State researcher is author of "Race, Neighborhood Disadvantage, and Violence among Persons with Mental Disorders: The Importance of Contextual Measurement," which recently appeared in the journal Law and Human Behavior.

The Penn State study was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Research Network on Mental Health and Law and by the National Consortium on Violence Research, a program of the National Science Foundation.

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Contacts:

Paul Blaum (814) 865-9481 (o) pab15@psu.edu

Vicki Fong (814) 865-9481 (o)/ (814) 238-1221 (h) vfong@psu.edu

EDITORS: Dr. Silver can be reached at (814) 865-8867 or at exs44@psu.edu by email.