There is good evidence from epidemiological studies that the diagnosis of schizophrenia is associated with an increased risk of violence.Some studies have linked the presence of positive symptoms, first psychotic episode, duration of untreated psychosis and lack of insight with violent behavior.

The primary objective was to identify factors related to violent behavior in patients diagnosed with psychotic disorder attended by our group, a multidisciplinary mobile outreach team (EMSE).

We evaluated a total of 249 patients diagnosed with psychotic disorder between 2007 and 2012. We administered the following scales: PANSS, GAF (Global Assessment of Functioning), CGI (Clinical Global Impression), GEP (Severity of psychiatric illness scale, AVAT (Instrument to assess violent behavior in mental illness) and SUMD (Scale unawareness of mental disorders). To study the correlation between the scales and the score of the AVAT instrument we used the Pearson correlation. Clinical variables were also compared between aggressive and non-aggressive patients using Chisquare and Student's.

There is a positive correlation between AVAT and PANSS-P (r = 0.544), ICG (r = 0.472), GEP (r = 0.515) and a negative correlation between AVAT and GAF (r = -0357). The correlation between AVAT and SUMD is positive (r = 0.119) but not statistically significant.

The presence of positive symptoms and clinical severity has been linked to increased aggressiveness and to predict the occurrence of violent behavior in the course of psychotic disorder. Unlike other studies, no correlation was observed with the lack of insight.