BACKGROUND Psychiatric patients showing risk to themselves or others can be involuntarily hospitalised. No data is available on whether following hospitalisation there is a reduction in psychopathological indicators of risk such as suicidality and hostility. This study aimed to assess changes in suicidality and hostility levels following involuntary admission and their patient-level predictors....

Involuntary Outpatient Commitment, also referred to as Assisted Outpatient Treatment or Community Treatment Orders, are controversial civil court procedures whereby judges may order non-adherent mentally ill individuals to comply with treatment. This presentation will summarize the data and controversy about these procedures and put them in the context of the larger debate about the use of coer...

Seventeen patients with choreiform, athetoid, or ballistic involuntary movements, or with spasmodic torticollis, were treated with tetrabenazine in doses of 25 to 200 mg daily for periods varying from two weeks to more than six months. Randomized ciné film of the patients' involuntary movements, taken before, during, and after treatment was assessed individually by seven `blind' observers. Eigh...

Results The proportion of urgent involuntary hospitalizations (Article 23) decreased in that period from 9.5 to 7.5% of the total number of admissions in mental hospitals, and from 8.5 to 6.5% in psychiatric wards of general hospitals. The ratio of involuntary admissions for psychiatric observation (Article 24) increased from 0.85 to 1.6% in mental hospitals, and in psychiatric wards from 0.8 t...

Purpose: Involuntary mental health admissions remain a highly contested area in law, policy and practice. There are growing concerns about the effectiveness and potential harms of using coercion to enable treatment. These concerns are heightened by the worldwide shift to recovery oriented care, which emphasizes the importance for mental health consumers experiencing selfsufficiency, control and...