Practitioner-Suggested Voluntary Psychiatric Hospitalization from a Feminist Therapy Perspective

Abstract

This study explores “practitioner-suggested voluntary psychiatric hospitalization,” or the gray area between voluntary and involuntary admission into psychiatric inpatient treatment where voluntary patients feel they have been persuaded into admission by practitioners with the authority to admit them involuntarily. Some scholars discuss this phenomenon in terms of power, indicating that what a practitioner views as a suggestion may be interpreted by a patient as coercion due to power imbalance within the psychiatric setting. However, research on how individuals with marginalized identities are affected by practitioner-suggested hospitalization is largely inconclusive. This study sought to address this gap by interviewing four feminist therapists, who focus on the intersections of social identities such as race, gender, and sexual orientation while promoting an egalitarian therapeutic relationship. The study discussed the experiences and opinions of feminist therapists and analyzed emerging themes.