Freedom and control in the inpatient setting—A search for new directions

Abstract

W ITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS, inpatient psychiatric treatment is distinguishable from outpatient psychiatry by the fact that the patient relinquishes to others varying amounts of control over his own freedom of action. While this is not the only differentiating factor, it is enormously important in shaping the experience of inpatient care for the patient, and involves large amounts of staff time, energy, and thought. In recent years, inpatient psychiatry has undergone something approximating a state of siege, emanating from two separate but philosophically-related From within psychiatry, coercive powers as not only anti-therapeutic, rights. From without, success, modified provide increased legal recourse freedom of treatment centers therapy patients’ wishes, concept of the patient’s right to treatment. movement as a long of previous abuses, current is an increase