Introduction

The chapter provides the background of the study; despite psychiatry being the field of care in which the use of coercion is most heavily regulated, and the practitioners are being subject to the same rigorous legislation, research has drawn attention to a variety of practices and different degrees of transparency related to the use of coercive measures among service providers. This calls for attention to the deliberations of the professional subjects applying coercive measures in real-life situations. The study is a response to that call, by collecting and interpreting oral and written testimonies from both those hands-on and those heads-on regarding the use of coercion in mental health care. The chapter presents the research questions, methodology, the participants—and their different manners of telling—and the situatedness of the researcher. Finally, it provides a brief outline of the three parts of the book: Part I—the writing up of four individual star cases; Part II—a careful reading across all cases; and Part III—a discussion of what was identified through the analysis of the narrative accounts, applying existential and psychosocial theoretical perspectives.