VIOLENCE: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS.
Contributors: University of Pittsburgh.
Published: 1988
Number of pages: 216
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Mental Health.; Psychology, Social.
Description: On psychiatric units nurses are faced daily with the possibility of patient violence. Although the prediction and management of violent behavior has been the subject of study by researchers using quantitative methods, no similar qualitative studies have emerged.

The purpose of this phenomenological analysis is to describe the psychiatric inpatient's experience of being violent. The understanding gained from this study is intended to be utilized to mediate violent behavior by teaching patients to choose nondestructive actions in similar circumstances.

The setting was an acute care, university-based psychiatric facility located in a metropolitan area in western Pennsylvania. Six subjects, three women and three men, ages fourteen to thirty-nine, described their violent behavior. An open-ended interviewing approach was utilized. The participants had been physically assaultive against another patient or a staff member. Data were collected through a series of three interviews.

The analysis method of phenomenologist Paul Colaizzi was used. Individual meaning units, themes and descriptions were derived from the raw data. These elements were then used to synthesize a common description of the experience of being violent which incorporated the commonalities across all six individual descriptions.

Two main differences were found in the subjects' views of their violent behavior. For some it was seen as a part of their illness or of their personhood because of their illness. For others it was viewed as a normal reaction to a provocation.

Across all subjects was the feeling of being unjustly singled out and treated unfairly. Two subjects had been victims of traumatic assaults in the past. Their assault on another was triggered by a thought or a feeling which was related to that previous incident. The others had prior verbal altercations with the person they assaulted.

Subjects differed in their desire to resolve the incident with the assaulted person. The importance of clear enunciations of unit rules regarding the acting out of physical violence on the unit was demonstrated.

This research demonstrated that by gaining an understanding of a particular individual's violence it was possible to understand under what circumstances future violence might occur in that person.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-12, Section: B, page: 5227.

Thesis (PH.D.)--UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH, 1988.

School code: 0178.