French lay people's views regarding the acceptability of involuntary hospitalization of patients suffering from psychiatric illness

PurposeTo understand how lay people and health professionals in France judge the acceptability of hospitalizing a psychiatric patient against his will.Methods123 lay people, 20 nurses, 5 psychologists, and 6 physicians judged the acceptability of involuntary hospitalization in each of 36 scenarios consisting of all combination of 4 factors: patient's adherence to treatment (agrees to take his medications or not); risk of suicide (none, immediate, multiple past attempts); risk of harming others (none, immediate, history of violence against others); attitude of patient's family (favorable to involuntary hospitalization or not). The judgment data were subjected to cluster analysis and subsequently to analysis of variance.Results4 clusters were identified and labeled according to the factors that affected judgments: Never Favorable (7 participants, with mean acceptability judgment of 1.30 on a scale of 0–10); Threat to Others (35, with mean judgment of 8.68 when risk high, 2.94 when risk low), Threat to Others or Self and Adherence (88, with mean judgment of 6.89), and Always Favorable (24, with mean judgment of 8.41).Conclusions95% of participants agreed that involuntary hospitalization is acceptable under certain conditions, especially – in accordance with French law – when the patient presents a risk to others.