Ns. Bennett et al., INCLUSION, MOTIVATION, AND GOOD FAITH - THE MORALITY OF COERCION IN MENTAL-HOSPITAL ADMISSION, Behavioral sciences & the law, 11(3), 1993, pp. 295-306
We administered a semi-structured interview to 157 patients shortly af
ter their admission to a psychiatric hospital. In the first, and open-
ended, part of the interview, patients were asked to talk about what h
ad been going on in their lives that led to their coming into the hosp
ital. Then, in a more structured format, they were asked more specific
details about who was involved, the patients' relationships with thos
e involved, whether any attempts were made to influence the patient to
come into the hospital, and whether such attempts were perceived as f
air by the patient. This article presents a qualitative review of the
transcripts of a subset of these interviews. It attends specifically t
o patients' perceptions of the morality of attempts by others-primaril
y family members, friends and mental health professionals-to influence
them to be admitted to the hospital, and of the morality of the proce
ss by which these influence attempts resulted in admission.