The COVR is an interactive software program that guides you through a brief chart review and a 10-minute interview with the patient to create a statistically valid estimate of the patient’s violence risk after discharge into the community. The report includes the confidence interval for that estimate and a list of the questions used to produce the estimate.

Estimates the risk of an acute psychiatric patient becoming violent to others

• Based on an interactive “classification tree” method that allows many different combinations of risk factors to classify an individual at a given level of risk, each COVR assessment is individualized. The questions asked depend on answers given to prior questions.
• Because a number of variables might be potential risk factors for violence among people with a mental disorder, the authors assessed personal factors (e.g., demographic and personality variables), historical factors (e.g., past violence, mental hospitalizations), contextual factors (e.g., social support, social networks), and clinical factors (e.g., diagnosis, specific symptoms).
• Patients in acute psychiatric facilities (N = 1,136) were assessed on 106 potential risk factors for violent behavior and were followed for 20 weeks in the community after discharge from the hospital.