ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Digital Mental Health
Rethinking Violence Prevention in Elderly and Special Needs Care: Requirements for Digital Solutions
DigiHealth Institute, University of Applied Science Neu-Ulm, Neu-Ulm, Germany
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Abstract
Background: The lack of specific guidelines for reporting and documenting violent behavior in elderly and special needs care makes it difficult to compile accurate statistics on incidents. Even though initial violence prevention strategies already exist, a comprehensive, centralized, and process-oriented approach to violence prevention is still missing and often demanded by domain experts. In this context, standardization could help improve visibility of the interrelationships and the problem itself. Aims: The main focus is to gain a deeper understanding of the processes involved in reporting and handling incidents of violence. Requirements for the digital support of violence protection concepts are identified that help implementing digital applications. Methods: This manuscripts follows a qualitative approach, where 18 semi-structured interviews were analyzed according the qualitative content analysis by Kuckartz. All interviewees were violence protection officers and managers of elderly and special needs care institutions. Results: The study identifies various phases in the process of documenting violent incidents that could be supported and automated by digital applications. The main focus is on documenting the incident itself and logging the entire incident handling process. Requirements for a digital application to handle these processes are outlined by this manuscript. Interviewees demand for the implementation of such applications and see them as an opportunity to standardize procedures and to generate and analyze statistics on incidents. This will ultimately lead to more targeted strategies for addressing and preventing violence. Conclusion: This manuscript provides the foundation for developing digital applications to support violence prevention concepts in elderly and special needs care institutions. Standardization in this domain can improve the management of such incidents for all parties involved. This will also lead to improvements in overall care and working conditions.
Summary
Keywords
Documentation, elderly care, qualitative research, requirements, Special Needs Care, standardization, violence assessment, violence prevention
Received
31 March 2026
Accepted
13 July 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Kappe and Schobel. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Miriam Kappe
Disclaimer
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