Single-sex psychiatric services to protect women.

Background: Most psychiatric services (eg, inpatient units, day therapy centers, outpatient clinics, and community clinics) are not currently segregated by sex, but recent developments--such as increasing psychiatric acuity and increasing numbers of comorbidities--have raised the level of violence and perceived threat in psychiatric facilities and have made a proportion of the more vulnerable patients feel unsafe.

Aim: The purpose of this review is to examine the concept of vulnerability as it applies to female psychiatric patients and to review the literature on the determinants of violence in psychiatric facilities and on preferences among psychiatric patients with respect to same-sex vs mixed-sex psychiatric services.

Results: Literature from Great Britain and from disability organizations supports same-sex facilities as options for women who feel unsafe in mixed-sex facilities. Outcomes with respect to violent incidents have not been evaluated.

Conclusions: Same-sex psychiatric facilities need to be implemented in a variety of communities and careful research conducted to examine potential benefits in specific populations.