Basic legal and professional criteria for determining compulsory detention and compulsory hospitalization of persons with mental disturbances

Abstract:

Legal decrees on “civil” compulsory hospitalization contained in Section V. of the Law on the Protection of Persons with Mental Disturbances are in accordance with official decisions present in the majority of contemporary laws on mental health and in international documents on human rights and freedom of psychiatric patients. Certain difficulties in their everyday implementation are primarily caused by insufficient respect of there regulations, both on the level of government-provided material, organizational and institutional conditions and on the level of individual “ignoring” of articles the contents of which due to any reason are not convenient for some participants in this procedure. The basic condition for quality approach of medical professionals in the procedure of compulsory hospitalization is an appropriate education directed at as reliable as possible diagnostics of more severe mental disturbances and their relation to actually risky behavior of a patient, as well as the good knowledge of all legal norms regulating the mentioned procedure

Key words:
compulsory hospitalization, compulsory detention, compulsory placement, the Law on the Protection of Persons with Mental Disturbances