Diversity and consistency in the legal management of involuntary admission and treatment across europe

Abstract

Since the 1950s, changes in mental health care and the activities of human rights movements have changed the focus of treatment from a prescriptive type to one that takes into consideration the patients' views and the rights of the mentally ill individual. With this change, the legal framework for involuntary admission and treatment of the mentally ill has been reformed in many European countries (Salize, Dreâing, &Peitz, 2002). It is undisputed that treating the mentally ill without paying attention to their views has led to serious abuses that tarnished the status of psychiatry. Various asylum scandals that took place in western European countries made it evident that safeguards, for the people admitted and treated against their wishes, needed to be firmly in place (Blom-Cooper, 1992). The abuses of psychiatry and the application of various treatments that were directed against individuals opposed to the state, and the fact that in Eastern Europe political dissidents could be branded mentally ill and kept in asylums against their wishes, further underlined the need for respect of the basic human rights of people as well as the need for firm safeguards and a standard procedure that allows for appeal and a second opinion.