CHICAGO – Does clinical judgment improve or worsen an actuarial assessment of violence?
Forensic psychiatrist Brian A. Falls sought to answer the question in an inpatient study presented at the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law’s annual meeting. His research, conducted while Dr. Falls was a fellow at the University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, analyzed whether adding clinical judgment to the use of the Classification of Violence Risk (COVR) tool led to better prediction of future violence. COVR is a software program that considers up to 40 risk factors to estimate a patient’s violence risk. Dr. Fall’s study found that clinical judgment improves overall actuarial assessment of violence but does not have the same relationship with all types of violence.
In a video interview at the meeting, Dr. Falls spoke about how clinical conclusions can affect the use of COVR and why different violence categories might have yielded contrasting results. The first-of-its-kind research might help evaluators better identify individuals prone to committing violence and those at less risk.
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