What's essential is dealing with reports and complaints of any kind is discerning between a usual, a persistent and a querulant (unusually persistent) complainant.
The persistent complainants’ pursuit of vindication and retribution fits badly with complaints systems established to deliver reparation and compensation. Extract from a report on Unusually Persistent Complainants against the Police in Scotland:
The research on which this report is based arose from my view, shared by many others, that increasingly organisations are required to manage people who make persistent complaints. This small group of individuals can consume a disproportionate amount of an organisation’s resources, pursuing what they believe are legitimate complaints, for longer and with more intensity than the majority of the population would consider reasonable.
The key to managing unacceptable complainant conduct is to manage your own response to it (New South Wales Ombusdman, 2009A) and the importance of adequate training, supervision and managerial support for complaints handlers can not be overstated.
They used the term ‘querulousness’ to refer to a constellation of behaviours and attitudes, which may, or may not, arise secondary to a major mental disorder. The key is that it is a problem behaviour, the causes of which can be many and varied. The behaviour involves “the unusually persistent pursuit of a personal grievance in a manner seriously damaging to the individual’s economic, social, and personal interests, and disruptive to the functioning of the courts and/or other agencies attempting to resolve the claims” (Mullen and Lester, 2006).
The following extract is from the report in NSW referenced in the Scottish one above:
Appendix 1 – A word on unusually persistent complainants (querulants)
Querulance is a psychiatric diagnosis for people who have morbid (illness driven) complaining behaviour. These people are abnormally driven by suspicion and accusations and tend to exhibit extreme kinds of UCC. For example, when compared to a matched control group, querulants have been found to:
<span class="italic">• Pursue their complaints for much longer than other complainants.</span>
<span class="italic">• Produce far greater volumes of material in support of their case.</span>
<span class="italic">• Telephone more frequently and for longer.</span>
<span class="italic">• Intrude more frequently without an appointment.</span>
<span class="italic">• Continue complaining after their cases have been closed.</span>
<span class="italic">• Engage in behaviour that was typically more difficult and intimidating.</span>
<span class="italic">• Involve other/external organisations more often including contacting Ministers as their complaints progress.</span>
<span class="italic">• Want outcomes that a complaint handling system cannot deliver – eg vindication, retribution and revenge.</span>
The research in this area also indicates that one of the distinguishing features of querulance is an extreme loss of focus over time that results in querulants pursuing multiple complaints at the same time and across a number of organisations as demonstrated in the charts below.
imgur.com/a/2TklcYj