The impact of the UK’s first COVID-19 lockdown on rates of violence and aggression on psychiatric inpatient wards

Aims Inpatient life in UK mental health hospitals was profoundly altered during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analysed whether these changes impacted the rate of violent and aggressive incidents across acute adult wards and psychiatric intensive care units in a South London NHS Mental Health Trust during the first UK lockdown. Methods We used an interrupted time series analysis to assess whether the rate of violent and aggressive incidents changed during the lockdown period from 23rd March 2020 to 15th June 2020. We used a quasi-poisson general additive model to model the weekly rate of violent incidents as a function of a seasonal trend, time trend, and impact of lockdown, using data from 1 st January 2017 to 27 th September 2020. Results There was a 35% increase in the rate of incidents of violence and aggression [IR = 1.35, 95% CI: 1.15 – 1.58, p < 0.001] between March 23rd 2020 and June 15th 2020. In addition, there was strong evidence of temporal (p < 0.001) and seasonal trends (p < 0.001). Conclusions Our results suggest that restrictions to life increased the rate of violent incidents on the mental health wards studied here.