Compulsory psychiatric care—an arena for conflicts and research

Abstract

Compulsory psychiatric care is a challenge for research. One challenge is the conflict concerning the concept of compulsory care itself, due to different ethical views and different ideological and professional traditions. A Swedish study of 100 committed and 99 voluntarily admitted patient, their relatives and their attendants, gave many interesting answers concerning attitudes to compulsory psychiatric care. The most important conclusions concerns the complexity and ambiguity of the concept of coercion and not least the concept of justifiable coercion.