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The views of voluntary patients
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Extract
Sir: We read with interest Paul & Oyebode's paper regarding the competence of voluntary psychiatric patients (Psychiatric Bulletin, August 1999, 463–466). We too have data on a related, but distinct, area of research. One hundred consecutive informal patients were interviewed on the third day of admission and one week later. At the first assessment, 78% thought they needed to be in hospital and 74% thought they needed treatment. Only 43% recalled receiving an explanation of their admission and treatment plan. We assessed their knowledge of their rights to refuse admission and treatment. At the first assessment, 67% were aware of their right to refuse treatment with 52% anticipating coercion if they exercised this right. Seventy-three per cent were aware of their right to leave hospital an 42% anticipated coercion if they exercised this right.
- Type
- Correspondence
- Information
- Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 23 , Issue 12: The Journal of Trends in Psychiatric Practice , December 1999 , pp. 748
- Creative Commons
- This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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- Copyright © 1999 Royal College of Psychiatrists
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