This volume on Violence and Mental Disorders is the first in a series entitled Comprehensive Approach to Psychiatry edited by the Italian Psychiatric Association (Società Italiana di Psichiatria, SIP) in collaboration with Springer. One of the main goals of our Association is to promote scientific knowledge at an international level based on the contribution provided by Italian Psychiatry. The identification of violence as an opening issue for the series is not a fortuitous choice. Indeed, although mental disorders contribute to overall societal violence to a limited extent, this involvement unfortunately continues to be associated with a disproportionate degree of social alarm. Violent behaviors are frequently associated with mental disorder, eliciting fear among both the general population and healthcare professionals. In all honesty we should acknowledge how mental disorder and violence are still today perceived as being closely connected, leading to an unbearably heavy stigma for both patients and psychiatrists. A major step forward introduced in 1978 with the Italian Psychiatric Reform related to removal of the wording “danger to oneself or to others …” from the criteria for coercive psychiatric treatment, and the abolition of Psychiatric Hospitals, a process of deinstitutionalization which recently concluded with the dismantling of the Judicial Psychiatric Hospitals. Indeed, the highly debated Law 81/2014 saw Italy resolutely opt to go beyond the administration of large forensic institutes, replacing them with a network of small residential facilities known as “REMS” (Residences for the execution of safety measures),