Violent Victimization of Adults with Severe Mental Illness Living in a Community

— An Integrative Literature Review —

Abstract

Objective: This review clarifies the violence type, research design, and factors associated with violent victimization of adults with severe mental illness (SMI) living in a community in foreign countries and obtains suggestions for future activities of Japanese public health nurses (PHNs) and research issues.

Method: A literature search was conducted using PubMed and CINAHL in September 2021 with keywords related to adults with SMI and victimization. Based on the quality evaluation of studies, we screened studies, had published since 2015, that have collected empirical data on violent victimization of adults with SMI in a community. We summarized details of the 15 studies in a table to synthesize the characteristics descriptively.

Results: Physical, sexual, and psychological violence were addressed in almost all of the studies, while fewer studies addressed financial exploitation, neglect, violence from family members, and community violence. The factors associated with overall violent victimization and violence from family members were consistent with previous reviews while refraining from reporting victimization, female gender, and non-employment were new findings. As study design, cross-sectionals, cohorts, and randomized control trials, and a qualitative study were employed.

Discussion: Future research needs to take a comprehensive view of violent victimization, including psychological violence, financial exploitation, and neglect, and to investigate community violence. Employment support aimed at financial independence is recommendable for preventing violence from family members. The trend in research design has been changing from factor analysis to practical intervention. In Japan, it is possible to take a research approach targeting PHNs or statistical data.