Involuntary commitment or civil commitment (also known informally as sectioning or being sectioned in some jurisdictions, such as the UK) is a legal process through which an individual who is deemed by a qualified agent to have symptoms of severe mental disorder is court-ordered into treatment in a psychiatric hospital (inpatient) or in the community (outpatient).
Criteria for civil commitment are established by laws, which vary between nations. Commitment proceedings often follow a period of emergency hospitalization, during which an individual with acute psychiatric symptoms is confined for a relatively short duration (e.g. 72 hours) in a treatment facility for evaluation and stabilization by mental health professionalsâ€"who may then determine whether further civil commitment is appropriate or necessary. If civil commitment proceedings follow, then the evaluation is presented in a formal court hearing where testimony and other evidence may also be submitted. The subject of the hearing is typically entitled to legal counsel and may challenge a commitment order through habeas corpus rules.
Historically, until the first third of the twentieth century or later in most jurisdictions, all committals to public psychiatric facilities and most committals to private ones were involuntary. Since then, there have been alternating trends towards the abolition or substantial reduction of involuntary commitment, a trend known as "deinstitutionalisation".
Purpose
In most jurisdictions, involuntary commitment is specifically applied to individuals believed to be experiencing a mental illness that impairs their reasoning ability to such an extent that the agents of the law, state, or courts determine that decisions will be made for the individual, under a legal framework. In some jurisdictions, this is a distinct proceeding from being "found incompetent".
Involuntary commitment is used to some degree for each of the following headings although different jurisdictions have different criteria. Some jurisdictions limit court-ordered treatment to individuals who meet statutory criteria for presenting a danger "to self or others". Other jurisdictions have broader criteria.
First aid
Training is gradually becoming available in mental health first aid to equip community members such as teachers, school administrators, police officers, and medical workers with training in recognizing, and authority in managing, situations where involuntary evaluations of behavior are applicable under law. The extension of first aid training to cover mental health problems and crises is a quite recent development. A mental health first aid training course was developed in Australia in 2001 and has been found to improve assistance provided to persons with an alleged mental illness or mental health crisis. This form of training has now spread to a number of other countries (Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Singapore, Scotland, England, Wales, and the United States). Mental health triage may be used in an emergency room to make a determination about potential risk and apply treatment protocols.
Observation
Observation is sometimes used to determine whether a person warrants involuntary commitment. It is not always clear on a relatively brief examination whether a person is psychotic or otherwise warrants commitment.
Containment of danger
Austria, Belgium, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Russia, Taiwan, Ontario (Canada), and the United States have adopted commitment criteria based on the presumed danger of the defendant to self or to others. People with suicidal thoughts may act on these impulses and harm or kill themselves. People with psychosis are occasionally driven by their delusions or hallucinations to harm themselves or others. People with certain types of personality disorders can occasionally present a danger to themselves or others.
This concern has found expression in the standards for involuntary commitment in every U.S. state and in other countries as the "danger to self or others" standard, sometimes supplemented by the requirement that the danger be "imminent". In some jurisdictions, the "danger to self or others" standard has been broadened in recent years to include need-for-treatment criteria such as "gravely disabled".
Deinstitutionalization
Starting in the 1960s, there has been a worldwide trend toward moving psychiatric patients from hospital settings to less restricting settings in the community, a shift known as "deinstitutionalization". Because the shift was typically not accompanied by a commensurate development of community-based services, critics say that deinstitutionalization has led to large numbers of people who would once have been inpatients as instead being incarcerated or becoming homeless. In some jurisdictions, laws authorizing court-ordered outpatient treatment have been passed in an effort to compel individuals with chronic, untreated severe mental illness to take psychiatric medication while living outside the hospital (e.g. Laura's Law, Kendra's Law).
Since the late 1960s the Italian physician Giorgio Antonucci questioned the basis themselves of psychiatry through the dismantling of the psychiatric hospitals Osservanza and Luigi Lolli and the liberation â€" and restitution to life â€" of the people there secluded.
Before the 1960s deinstitutionalization there were earlier efforts to free psychiatric patients. Doctor Philippe Pinel (1745â€"1826) ordered the removal of chains from patients.
There was a study of 269 patients from Vermont State Hospital done by Courtenay M. Harding, Ph.D., and associates, about two-thirds of the ex-patients did well after deinstitutionalization.
Around the world
United Nations
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 46/119, "Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and the Improvement of Mental Health Care," is a non-binding resolution advocating certain broadly drawn procedures for the carrying out of involuntary commitment. These principles have been used in many countries where local laws have been revised or new ones implemented. The UN runs programs in some countries to assist in this process.
Politically motivated abuses
At certain places and times, the practice of involuntary commitment has been used for the suppression of dissent, or in a punitive way.
In the former Soviet Union, psychiatric hospitals were used as prisons to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society. British playwright Tom Stoppard wrote Every Good Boy Deserves Favour about the relationship between a patient and his doctor in one of these hospitals. Stoppard was inspired by a meeting with a Russian exile.
In 1927, after the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in the United States, a demonstrator named Aurora D'Angelo was sent to a mental health facility for psychiatric evaluation after she participated in a rally in support of the anarchists.
See also
References
Further reading
External links
- National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse (United States)
- National Resource Center on Psychiatric Advance Directives (United States)
- Szalavitz, Maia (6 July 2007). "Must-See Indy Film Exposes Cruel Teen Correction Programs". AlterNet. Retrieved 2007-07-08.Â
- "Baker Act Reporting Center". College of Behavioral and Community Sciences. University of South Florida. Provides information related to Florida's Civil Commitment Statute.
- National Alliance on Mental Illness (United States)
- Stevens, Lawrence (n.d.). "Unjustified Psychiatric Commitment in the U.S.A". The Antipsychiatry Coalition.Â