Indexing Civil Commitment in Psychiatric Emergency Rooms

Extended civil commitment for dangerous psychiatric patients.

Mental health clinicians are increasingly held civilly liable for the dangerous acts of their psychiatric patients. One area of liability is the negligent release of involuntarily committed patients who engage in dangerous acts after their hospital discharge. All states have provisions for extended involuntary commitment for mentally ill dangerous patients. We examined extended civil commitment...

Civil commitment in the psychiatric emergency room. II. Mental disorder indicators and three dangerousness criteria.

Proponents of return to a "need for treatment" standard for civil commitment contend that the current dangerousness standard forces psychiatrists to neglect severely ill patients in favor of those who are less ill but dangerous to others. Among 198 psychiatric emergency patients in five facilities, those rated as most dangerous on Three Ratings of Involuntary Admissibility, a reliable index of ...

Survey of psychiatric assessment rooms in UK emergency departments

Aims and method We aimed to estimate the proportion of UK emergency departments with a psychiatric assessment room and to determine whether such rooms met criteria for conducting high-risk assessments. Liaison psychiatry services were asked whether their hospital had such a room, whether it met the criteria and whether respondents judged it to be sufficiently safe and private. Results Of the 60...

An analysis of police referrals to 10 psychiatric emergency rooms.

Data were collected on all psychiatric referrals to 10 emergency rooms in New York State during a 72-hour period in early December 1988. Overall, 30 percent of the 362 cases were brought by the police while the 10 emergency room percentages referrals varied from 10 to 53 percent. As compared with nonpolice referrals, police cases were as likely to be rated by clinicians as currently having psyc...

Emergency psychiatry: contemporary practices in managing acutely violent patients in 20 psychiatric emergency rooms.