Talking it down

Most tense moments with another person aren't muggings. They're arguments: a refusal at a counter, a queue that has gone on too long, a parking space two drivers both wanted. Most of them end with nothing worse than a raised voice. A few don't. This lesson is about the few minutes when someone is angry with you and you can't walk away yet: what the guidance says to do with your voice, your hands and your feet, how good the evidence behind each piece is, and how to tell when talking has stopped being the right tool.

One thing first. Nothing in this lesson is advice for dealing with a partner, ex-partner or family member who frightens you. Calming techniques used there can look like managing the abuser (this course's judgement, not a finding), and the services offer a different kind of help. "Domestic abuse and stalking" is the lesson for that, and it starts with the helplines.

The responsibility sentence in that box matters here as much as anywhere. An angry person who hurts someone is responsible for it, whatever was said to them first. Nothing below is a test that anyone who was hurt in an argument failed.

Where talking sits

Lesson 1 set out the order of options this course follows for a threatening encounter: avoid, leave, talk, comply or resist, get away. Leaving is allowed at every rung, including in the middle of a conversation that seems to be going well. That order is this course's way of arranging the options, drawn together from the sources it read; no study has tested it as a sequence, so read it as a map rather than a finding.

Talking is the third rung, after avoiding and leaving, and the order is deliberate. If you can simply go, going is usually simpler than calming someone down, and nothing in this lesson should make you feel you ought to stay and try. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust, the UK's personal safety charity, puts the same instinct plainly in its advice for festivals: "Be aware of aggressive behaviour from others, and remove yourself from aggressive situations."¹ In this course's labels, practitioner opinion.

So when is de-escalation the right tool at all? On this course's reading of the sources, in two kinds of moment. One is when leaving isn't possible yet: you're behind a counter, at a till, in a queue with your child, or the person stands between you and the door. The other is when someone depends on you staying: you're at work and can't abandon the desk, or the person you'd be leaving behind is a colleague or a stranger caught up in it. In both, talking has the same aim as leaving. The aim is to get everyone out of the moment without anyone getting hurt, and winning isn't part of it.

Why the talking rung matters

Lesson 3 gave the figure this lesson starts from. The Home Office's record of every homicide in England and Wales, as the Office for National Statistics reports it for the year ending March 2025, found that "Around half (51%, 266 offences) of all homicide cases were thought to have resulted from a quarrel, a revenge attack or a loss of temper".³

Two cautions travel with that figure. First, it concerns killings, which are rare, and it says how they were thought to begin, not how often a quarrel ends in one. Most arguments end in nothing. Second, the share was higher where the suspect was known to the victim (59%) than where the suspect was unknown (44%).³ So a good many of those quarrels were between people who knew each other, and on this course's reading some will have been between partners, which is exactly why this lesson keeps saying what it isn't for. The link from "many killings begin as quarrels" to "learning to calm a quarrel is worth an hour" is this course's step, as lesson 3 said, not ONS's, and the course aims it at quarrels with strangers, customers and people at work.

Lesson 4 gave you a second way in. The grid of twenty-five situational prevention techniques has a whole column called Reduce Provocations, with entries such as "16. Reduce frustrations and stress" (its examples include efficient queues and polite service) and "17. Avoid disputes".⁴ Those are written for people who run shops, pubs and venues. De-escalation is the same idea at the scale of one conversation: take away the next provocation, and give the other person a way to calm down without losing face.

What the guidance says

Two documents carry most of what follows. Neither was written for you, so before borrowing from either, look at who it was written for.

NICE, for health and care staff

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published guideline NG10, Violence and aggression: short-term management in mental health, health and community settings, in 2015. It was written for health and social care staff, not as advice to the public.⁵ Its de-escalation section says staff training should enable them to "recognise the early signs of agitation, irritation, anger and aggression", "use techniques for distraction and calming, and ways to encourage relaxation", "recognise the importance of personal space" and "respond to a service user's anger in an appropriate, measured and reasonable way and avoid provocation."⁵ ("Service user" is NICE's term for a patient or client.)

This lesson leans on three of its recommendations.

One voice. "If a service user becomes agitated or angry, 1 staff member should take the primary role in communicating with them."⁵

Yourself first. "Use emotional regulation and self‑management techniques to control verbal and non‑verbal expressions of anxiety or frustration (for example, body posture and eye contact) when carrying out de‑escalation."⁵ In plain words: the first person to calm down is you, or at least the part of you the other person can see.

Respect. "Communicate respect for and empathy with the service user at all stages of de‑escalation."⁵

NICE also names what it calls known flashpoint situations: refusing a person's request, asking them to stop doing something they want to do, and asking them to do something they would rather not.⁵

Taking any of this to a shop counter, a car park or a bus is this course's step, not NICE's. NICE wrote it for staff on wards and in clinics, with training, colleagues and a care plan behind them. The ideas look as if they would travel, and this course thinks them worth borrowing, but nobody has measured whether they work when a member of the public uses them on a stranger.

Project BETA, from emergency psychiatry

The most usable practical text on verbal de-escalation this course found is a 2012 consensus statement by a workgroup of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry, which went by the name Project BETA, with Richmond as its first author. Free on PubMed Central, it is candid about its evidence from the start: "a review of the literature indicates that scientific studies and medical writings on verbal de-escalation are few and lack descriptions of specific techniques and efficacy." The guidelines "were therefore developed by the consensus of the authors and a review of the limited available literature".⁶

So everything from Project BETA is expert consensus: experienced clinicians agreeing on what works for them. In this course's labels that is practitioner opinion, from unusually well-qualified practitioners.

The workgroup arranges its advice under ten headings: respect personal space; do not be provocative; establish verbal contact; be concise; identify wants and feelings; listen closely; agree or agree to disagree; lay down the law and set clear limits; offer choices and optimism; and debrief.⁶ The table has the parts that carry over most directly, with the authors' reason where they give one.

All quotations in the table are from Richmond and colleagues.⁶

The limits row needs one more line. Project BETA's own example of a limit names a consequence: if necessary, "tell the patient that he may be arrested and prosecuted if he assaults anyone."⁶ What it rules out is saying that as a threat. The difference is in the manner, not in whether a consequence is mentioned.

Two of the headings need more than a line.

Agreeing. The workgroup gives three ways to agree with an angry person without lying: "agreeing with the truth", "agreeing in principle" and to "agree with the odds". Its examples are a patient who has had three failed attempts at a blood test (agree with the truth: yes, that has happened three times), a patient who says the police disrespected him (agree in principle that everyone should be treated with respect, without agreeing that he's right about the police), and a patient angry at a long wait (agree with the odds that other people would be upset by it too). And "if there is no way to honestly agree with the patient, agree to disagree."⁶ None of this means apologising for something you never did. It means finding the true thing you can say yes to.

Choices. The workgroup's ninth heading is about giving the person an alternative to the fight, and a realistic one. It warns against promising anything that can't be delivered.⁶ Peyton Quinn, whose rules come later in this lesson, calls the same thing a face-saving exit.

Why each piece is thought to work, and what is known about that

Notice what kind of reason each row gives. Several voices confuse; staring reads as aggression; humiliation provokes. For stating a limit "not as a threat" the authors give no reason. The reasons they do give come from clinical experience. A 2017 review by Hallett and Dickens of how de-escalation is described in the health literature found five proposed theories of how it works, each "adequate in some respects", all of which "lacked empirical support".¹⁶ So the honest position is this: the techniques come with sensible reasons, and nobody has shown that those reasons are why they work, or measured which of them does the work. The reasons above are the sources' own; this course adds none.

At work

If the angry person is a customer and you're at work, two workplace bodies have something to say.

In the US, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's workplace violence page defines workplace violence as "any act or threat of physical violence, harassment, intimidation, or other threatening behavior that occurs at the work site." Its risk factors include "exchanging money with the public", working "alone or in isolated areas", and "working where alcohol is served". It also says: "There are currently no specific OSHA standards for workplace violence."⁷

The Health and Safety Executive's definition is "'Any incident in which a person is abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances relating to their work.'" It includes "verbal abuse or threats, including face to face, online and via telephone". On its page for workers, HSE says you should "use the information and training your employer has provided to help you prevent incidents or know how to calm things down to avoid incidents escalating", and tell your employer about incidents. It adds that lone workers and "New starters, trainees and other vulnerable workers" may be at greater risk.⁸ Neither page says which parts of the UK it covers, and this lesson makes no guess.

Neither body's pages teach the techniques. HSE points workers to the training their employer provides and tells them to use it. What this lesson adds is a way to read that training: which parts rest on a trial, and which on consensus.

Leah at the pharmacy counter

The first case, worked through. Leah works on the counter of a pharmacy in Preston, in England. A man asks for a medicine that, under the pharmacy's rules, she may not sell without the pharmacist agreeing, and the pharmacist is with someone else. She tells him so. He says he has been waiting twenty minutes, raises his voice, and starts jabbing a finger at the counter. A queue is building behind him. Her colleague, Kwame, comes over to help.

This is NICE's first flashpoint, a refused request.⁵ Each step below gives what the guidance suggests, with its source and its label. Every step borrows from guidance written for health and care staff, so for Leah each one is the course's inference, not a tested result.

One voice. Kwame steps back, stays in sight, and lets Leah do the talking. If Kwame joins in, the man has two people to argue with. That is NICE's one-staff-member rule and Project BETA's reason for it: several voices confuse and escalate.⁵⁶ Kwame has a job too. He watches, and he fetches the pharmacist or calls for help if help is needed. Practitioner opinion, like everything in Project BETA.

Space and angle. The counter already puts distance between them. She stays back from it and turns slightly so she isn't squared up to him, with her hands open and in his sight. She looks at him without staring. Practitioner opinion, for each.⁶

Herself first. Her heart is going and her voice wants to rise to meet his. NICE's advice is to control the visible part: posture, voice, eye contact.⁵ Speaking a little more slowly than he is, and more quietly, is the easiest version of that to do under pressure; that particular suggestion is this course's, drawn from NICE's recommendation, and untested.

Short sentences, and agreeing with what is true. "You've been waiting a long time. I'm sorry about that." That is agreeing with the truth: he has been waiting, and she can say so without conceding the sale.⁶

When she stops. Suppose instead he leans over the counter, or comes round the end of it towards the gap. At that point the conversation has changed. Leah steps back from the counter towards the dispensary, and Kwame calls for help: the pharmacist, security if there is any, or 999 if anyone is in danger. Project BETA's rule that both people should be able to leave without feeling blocked is the nearest source; the decision that this is the moment is this course's reading, and the section "When to stop talking" sets it out in full.

Nothing in the example promises that he calms down. Some people stay angry whatever anyone says, and that is no failure of Leah's. What is known about how often any of this works comes next.

What the evidence shows

Here the lesson slows down, because this is where de-escalation advice most often outruns what was measured. The honest summary is short: health and workplace guidance recommends it, one profession has good trials of a training programme, and almost nothing is known about anyone else.

Police officers in Louisville

In 2019 a team led by Engel worked with the Louisville Metro Police Department in Kentucky to evaluate a de-escalation course called ICAT (Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics), developed by the Police Executive Research Forum. The training was rolled out to the city's patrol divisions in three groups, in an order chosen at random, so divisions not yet trained served as the comparison for those that had been.¹⁰ That design is called a stepped-wedge trial. Before it, the team wrote, "no research has empirically demonstrated that these trainings reduce use of force in the field".⁹

The National Institute of Justice's CrimeSolutions rates the programme Effective, on one study; it says that rating "implies that implementing the program is likely to result in the intended outcome(s)." Its description of the course includes active listening, defined as "listening to understand and not just respond", and tactics such as taking a "tactical pause" (if safe and appropriate) and using time and repositioning to keep a "reactionary gap", distance kept on purpose to give time to react.¹⁰

In this course's labels, ICAT is tested, for police officers.

A second city, with a shorter course

Engel and colleagues then ran a replication with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, reported to the National Institute of Justice in 2025, and it repays reading for what changed. The department used "a condensed 8-hour version of ICAT without scenario-based practice", though it backed the course with "additional departmentwide emphasis" on de-escalation through other training, policy and data collection.¹¹ The report's executive summary gives a "19.6% initial reduction in subjects who had force used against them (12-month follow-up), and 18.3% reduction sustained over an 18-month period", and a 25.2% initial fall in the number of people injured when force was used on them (21.8% sustained over 18 months). But officer injuries showed no statistically significant change, the one result that didn't repeat Louisville's.¹¹ Arrests fell over the same period too, by 15.3%, and after allowing for that the team put the training's own effect at between 5.0% and 19.6% less force.¹¹

Everyone else

Outside policing, the picture is thinner. Engel and colleagues' earlier systematic review, published in 2020, looked across every profession: "We identified 64 de-escalation training evaluations conducted over a 40-year period, primarily in the fields of nursing and psychiatry." The evaluations gave "some confidence" that the trainings "lead to slight-to-moderate individual and organizational improvements", with few adverse effects, but "conclusions concerning the effectiveness of de-escalation training are limited by the questionable quality of almost all evaluation research designs."¹² Each of those lines is in the publisher's abstract.

A 2018 Cochrane review of de-escalation for aggression in adults, excluding aggression caused by psychosis, found one eligible study: 306 nursing-home residents with dementia, in France, and that study measured none of the outcomes the reviewers had set out to look at. Its conclusion: "The limited evidence means that uncertainty remains around the effectiveness of de‐escalation and the relative efficacy of different techniques." In their plain-language summary, the reviewers add that the evidence "did not address important questions such as injury" and that they "cannot say whether de‐escalation techniques are effective."¹³

That result has a lesson of its own in it. Mental Fitness lesson 2 taught you to ask what the comparison group got. A before-and-after study has none: the same nurses are measured twice, so anything else that changed in between gets credited to the course. The review of Price and Baker points the same way. Writing in 2012, they found that de-escalation "has been overlooked by rigorous research, and it is often assumed that staff are able to perform these techniques in clinical practice."¹⁵ This course read their review, Heckemann's and Hallett and Dickens's as abstracts only.

Sorted

Put together, and sorted the way this course sorts every claim:

• Established: NICE recommends de-escalation as the first response for health and care staff, HSE tells workers to use their training in calming things down, and ICAT reduced police use of force in two stepped-wedge trials in two US cities.
• Expert consensus, without trial evidence: the specific techniques. Space, angle, hands, one voice, short sentences, agreeing where you honestly can, limits without threats, a way out. In this course's labels, practitioner opinion.
• Not known: whether any single technique works better than another, and whether training members of the public reduces violence against them. Nobody has measured it.

That last line leaves the step this lesson rests on, and it should be said plainly. That a reader of this page will handle an angry stranger better is this course's inference, from a police trial and from clinical consensus: a reasonable inference, and an untested one. Project BETA's authors add a caution of their own: knowledge about these skills "can be learned from a book, but skills come only with practice", and they suggest role play.⁶ A page can give you the words and the reasons behind them. The practice has to come from you, which is why the exercise at the end asks you to say your answers aloud, and to try one as a conversation if someone will help.

Practitioner teaching

Outside the professions, most de-escalation teaching comes from self-defence instructors. One list is widely repeated. Peyton Quinn's "Five Rules", as the self-defence author Marc MacYoung quotes them on his blog, are: do not insult him, do not challenge him, do not threaten him, do not deny it is happening, and give him a face-saving exit.¹⁷ MacYoung's post adds a sixth, do not command, which it credits to another instructor; by "command" MacYoung means speaking to someone as if they were beneath you. The blog's language is coarse, so this lesson paraphrases it.

Set that list beside Project BETA and the overlap is close: no provocation, no humiliation, limits without threats, choices. The two lists aren't wholly independent, since Project BETA says the general principles can be found in "law enforcement, martial arts, and the nursing profession", among other places.⁶ Still, it is agreement between people who deal with anger for a living, and it remains practitioners agreeing, not a trial. Practitioner opinion.

The same post passes on a model MacYoung credits to another self-defence writer, Rory Miller: violence "for social reasons and for asocial reasons".¹⁷ The post doesn't define the two beyond that. It says that the five rules will most likely prevent social violence and won't stop asocial violence, and its example of the second is a robber, to whom, in MacYoung's image, you're a cash machine on legs. MacYoung adds that breaking the rules makes even that worse. The research behind this course summarises the model as the difference between a contest over status and someone who has already decided to rob or hurt you; that summary is this course's, not the post's. Useful and widely taught, it remains practitioner opinion: nobody has tested it.

If someone's aim is your wallet, lesson 10, "What fear does to you, and the robbery decision", is the lesson for that moment, not this one.

When to stop talking

Every source above assumes that talking is working, or might. The harder part is noticing when it has stopped working, and going if you can. Even noticed in time, leaving isn't always possible, and that is never the fault of the person who couldn't. This course's reading of the sources gives four signals that the conversation has become something else:

1. The distance closes. The person steps in, leans over, or comes round whatever was between you. Project BETA's two arm's lengths, and its rule that nobody should feel their way out is blocked, are the nearest source.⁶
2. Others join. A friend arrives, or someone moves behind you. Richmond and colleagues' one-voice rule is about too many people talking; a second person on their side changes the arithmetic of leaving.
3. A weapon appears, or something is picked up to be used as one.
4. The demand changes. The argument about the parking space or the queue stops and a demand for your property, or for you, starts. In the practitioners' terms that is the move from social to asocial, and it belongs to lesson 10's decision.

Any one of the four is the signal to stop talking and leave, or, if leaving is impossible, to move to the next rung, which lesson 10 covers. The list is this course's synthesis, not any source's list, so its label is sensible, untested. NICE makes a related point from the staff side: when it says to take an agitated person somewhere quieter, it adds that staff shouldn't end up isolated.⁵ ICAT's "tactical pause" and "reactionary gap", from the police trial, are good names for slowing down and keeping your distance, but they were measured as parts of a police course, used by officers, and this lesson claims nothing more for them.¹⁰

Lesson 5 gave you a rule for cons at the door and on the phone: urgency is the tell. The same idea works here in reverse. Someone escalating wants things fast and loud; the person de-escalating slows them down on purpose, with short sentences, pauses and time to answer. That link between the two lessons is this course's, not any source's.

Farid in the car park

The second case has a wrinkle. Farid has just parked in a supermarket car park in Omaha, Nebraska, on a Saturday, and is lifting his three-year-old out of her car seat. A man gets out of the car behind and says loudly that he'd been waiting for that space with his turn signal on. Farid never saw him. The man is angry, and a few steps away. Farid can't walk off and leave his daughter half out of the car, and he can't drive off either, so for the moment talking is the rung: someone depends on him staying put.

The first minute. Farid straightens up with his daughter on his hip and stays by his own car, at least two arm's lengths from the man. Hands visible. He angles himself a little instead of squaring up. Then short sentences, and agreeing with the odds: "I didn't see you. Anyone would be annoyed after waiting for a space." He doesn't argue about who was first, which would be a challenge, nor tell the man to calm down, which lands as an order from above. He offers a way out that costs the man nothing: "I'll move once she's back in. There's space by the carts." Each move is Project BETA's or Quinn's, practitioner opinion in this course's labels, and applying it to a car park is this course's step.⁶¹⁷

It works for about a minute. The man is still talking but quieter. Then his passenger gets out, says nothing, and walks round the back of Farid's car until he stands behind him.

That isn't losing. The aim, from the start, was to get everyone out of the moment unhurt, and leaving does that. Quinn's face-saving exit usually means giving the other person one. Here, Farid takes one himself: a calm sentence and a door, rather than a back-down in front of an audience. That reading, face-saving working both ways, is this course's.

And if Farid had kept talking a little too long, or had got it wrong in a way this lesson never foresaw, the responsibility for anything that followed would lie with the two men who chose to crowd him. The lesson describes options going forward. It doesn't mark anyone's past.

What people get wrong

"De-escalation is proven." NICE recommends it for health and care staff and HSE tells workers to use their training in it, and it has been tested, in trials of one training programme, on police officers. In health settings a Cochrane review found one eligible study, and its authors "cannot say" whether it works.¹³ For the public, nobody has tested it.

"Calming someone down means giving in, or apologising for something you didn't do." Project BETA's three ways to agree are ways of agreeing with something true: the facts, a principle, or how most people would feel. And if nothing is true, you agree to disagree.⁶

"Hold eye contact to show you're not afraid." The consensus goes the other way: look, but don't stare, because staring "can be interpreted as an aggressive act".⁶

"The more people helping to talk someone down, the better." One voice. Both NICE and Project BETA say so, and give the reason: several voices confuse and escalate.⁵⁶ The others have jobs; the talking is one person's.

"You should always try to talk it down." Leaving comes before talking on this course's order, and stays open the whole time. De-escalation is for when you can't leave yet, or someone depends on you staying.

"Talking will work on anyone if you do it well enough." On the practitioners' model, as this course summarises it, talking can calm a contest over status and won't stop someone who has already decided to rob or hurt you. That model is untested, but nothing in the evidence says talking always works, and nobody who talked and was hurt anyway did it wrong.

Practice

Connections

Back. Lesson 1 set out the order of options and the four advice labels; this lesson is the talking rung, labelled. Mental Fitness lesson 2's question, what did the comparison group get, is why the nursing studies prove less than they seem to. First Aid and CPR lesson 16 showed that CPR skills fade without practice; the Indianapolis attitudes followed a similar path. "Domestic abuse and stalking" is the lesson for harm from a partner, ex-partner or family member, where none of this applies.

Forward. Lesson 9, "Stepping in for someone else", uses the same techniques when the person in the middle of it is somebody else. Lesson 10, "What fear does to you, and the robbery decision", picks up where the four signals leave off. Conflict Resolution, later on the Core, owns ordinary disagreement that carries no threat of violence.

Go deeper

• Richmond and colleagues, "Verbal De-escalation of the Agitated Patient", Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, 2012, free. Read here in full. Written for emergency clinicians, and the clearest description of the techniques this course found, with examples of what to say.
• CrimeSolutions, "Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics (ICAT) De-Escalation Training (Louisville, Kentucky)", National Institute of Justice, free. Read here in full. A short account of what the police course teaches and how the trial was rated.
• NICE, guideline NG10, recommendations, free. Read here: the de-escalation section in full. Recommendations 1.3.12 to 1.3.20 show what official guidance for staff looks like, and who it's for.
• Health and Safety Executive, "Advice for workers on violence in the workplace", free. Read here in full. Short, and worth reading if you deal with the public at work.

Sources

1. Suzy Lamplugh Trust, "Personal safety out and about", updated 29 May 2025. Read: full page. The festival advice.
2. Support lines in the content note, each read on its service's own page on 25 September 2026: Victim Support (England and Wales), Victim Support Scotland, Victim Support NI and VictimConnect. Read: each page in full, re-read 25 September 2026.
3. Office for National Statistics, Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2025, 5 February 2026. Read: sections 1 to 8 in full.
4. Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, "Twenty Five Techniques of Situational Prevention", grid after Cornish and Clarke, 2003. Read: in full (one page).
5. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, NG10, Violence and aggression: short-term management in mental health, health and community settings, published 28 May 2015. Read: the de-escalation section (1.3.12 to 1.3.20) and 1.4.5 in full; the rest of the recommendations skimmed. Written for health and social care staff.
6. Richmond and colleagues, "Verbal De-escalation of the Agitated Patient: Consensus Statement of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry Project BETA De-escalation Workgroup", Western Journal of Emergency Medicine 13(1), 2012, pp. 17 to 25. Read: in full. Expert consensus, by its own account.
7. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Workplace Violence. Read: in full.
8. Health and Safety Executive, "Violence and aggression at work" and "Advice for workers on violence in the workplace". Read: the employer guide's first page and the worker page, in full.
9. Engel, Corsaro, Isaza and McManus, "Assessing the impact of de-escalation training on police behavior: Reducing police use of force in the Louisville, KY Metro Police Department", Criminology & Public Policy 21, 2022, pp. 199 to 233. Read: abstract only.
10. National Institute of Justice, CrimeSolutions, "Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics (ICAT) De-Escalation Training (Louisville, Kentucky)". Read: in full.
11. Engel, Corsaro, Motz and Cherkauskas, Evaluation of ICAT Training with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, final report to the National Institute of Justice, 30 June 2025. Read: executive summary in full.
12. Engel, McManus and Herold, "Does de-escalation training work? A systematic review and call for evidence in police use-of-force reform", Criminology & Public Policy 19, 2020, pp. 721 to 759. Read: abstract and first pages in full, the rest searched, from a copy posted by a Dutch organisation rather than the publisher; the lines quoted are also in the publisher's abstract.
13. Spencer, Johnson and Smith, "De-escalation techniques for managing non-psychosis induced aggression in adults", Cochrane review CD012034.pub2, 2018. Read: abstract and results summary in full.
14. Heckemann and colleagues, "The effect of aggression management training programmes for nursing staff and students working in an acute hospital setting", Nurse Education Today 35, 2015, pp. 212 to 219. Read: abstract only.
15. Price and Baker, "Key components of de-escalation techniques: a thematic synthesis", International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 2012. Read: abstract only.
16. Hallett and Dickens, "De-escalation of aggressive behaviour in healthcare settings: concept analysis", International Journal of Nursing Studies 75, 2017, pp. 10 to 20. Read: abstract only.
17. Marc MacYoung, "Addition to the Five Rules of Violence", blog post, 2015, quoting Peyton Quinn's five rules and passing on Rory Miller's social and asocial model. Read: in full. Paraphrased. Practitioner opinion; neither Quinn's nor Miller's own books were read.
18. Office for Victims of Crime, "Help for Victims". Read: in full, re-read 25 September 2026.