Voluntary and Involuntary Psychiatric Hospitalization

In psychiatry, as in all of medicine, there are situations in which clinicians and patients do not agree on the need for hospitalization. In these situations, the risk to the patient and others must be carefully balanced against the patient’s civil rights and liberty interests. To help balance these competing interests, legal standards and procedures have been established. In the following chapter, these standards, procedures, and the history leading to their development will be presented.