[Compulsory hospitalization of psychiatric patients]

The authors deal with the question of the so-called compulsory hospitalization both in a wide and a narrow sense. A real psychopathological condition is prevalent over social danger in urgent psychiatric hospitalization and in compulsory hospitalization as well. A decrease in the number of compulsory hospitalizations in the last few decades is due, among other reasons, to the connection between the in-patient service and the alternative methods of treatment and the development of the outpatient net of psychiatric care. The study included 390 urgent psychiatric hospitalizations; 5.9% of the patients were brought after the intervention of the Security Police and in 4.6% cases the patients were hospitalized against their will. In a broader sense, the reasons for the compulsory hospitalization of males were aggressive behaviour, especially of those under the influence of alcohol, and acute psychotic states. In females the main cause was a psychotic state resulting from a real mental illness (p less than 0.01).