Commitment to psychiatric care: what justifies broader criteria for minors?

Severe mental disorder as a basic commitment criterion for minors.

Since 1991, commitment to involuntary psychiatric care has been allowed in Finland for minors in broader terms than for adults. While in adults mental illness has to be diagnosable before involuntary treatment can be imposed, minors can be committed to and detained in involuntary psychiatric treatment if they suffer from "severe mental disorders", and fulfil the further commitment criteria defi...

Volunteering children: parental commitment of minors to mental institutions.

Psychiatric emergencies of minors with and without migration background

BACKGROUND The conditions of children and adolescents with migration background receiving emergency psychiatric care in Europe are not well known. Migrants usually attend regular psychiatric care less frequently than the autochthonous population. We therefore speculated that, being undertreated, they would be overrepresented among psychiatric emergency care patients. METHODS We retrospectivel...

Broadening of Generalized Anxiety Disorders Definition Does not Affect the Response to Psychiatric Care: Findings from the Observational ADAN Study

OBJECTIVE To elucidate the consequences of broadening DSM-IV criteria for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), we examined prospectively the evolution of GAD symptoms in two groups of patients; one group diagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria and the other, according to broader criteria. METHOD Multicentre, prospective and observational study conducted on outpatient psychiatric clinics. Patien...

When Restoration Fails: One State's Answer to the Dilemma of Permanent Incompetence.

The landmark 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Jackson v. Indiana prohibited the indefinite commitment of criminal defendants on grounds of incompetence to stand trial if there was no substantial probability of restoration to competency in the foreseeable future. Such defendants are still subject to ordinary civil commitment; however, not all will meet civil commitment criteria, given that th...