[Involuntary Psychiatric Hospital Admissions According to Public Law - A Retrospective Analysis]

We provide an empirical survey of the current practice on involuntary psychiatric hospital admission.

Bases on clinical case records, we performed a retrospective analysis of 346 cases with an involuntary hospital admission according to public law in 2020 (21.0% of all inpatient admissions in this period).

Announcement of suicide was the most frequent cause for involuntary hospital admission (45.1%). Most common diagnoses were substance-related disorders (30.1%), stress-related disorders (19.9%), and schizophrenic psychoses (18.8%). Only 12.7% of the involuntary admissions resulted in a further involuntary hospitalization, whereas 44.5% of all episodes were followed by a discharge within 24 hours.

In many cases, involuntary hospital admissions are reactions to suicidal crises. It will be interesting to see, if the introduction of alternative low-threshold services can help to reduce the frequency of such admissions.