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Psychology Ethics: Involuntary Treatment (including involuntary commitment/hospitalization)

In the United States, psychologists don't do things to clients without their explicit permission or, if a client isn't capable of giving informed consent (ethics outside site), the permission of someone legally authorized to make that decision. If there's no one available, psychologists are bound to put the client's welfare (ethics outside site) first.

Involuntary Hospitalization

In the United States

In the US, people can't be forced into treatment just because they don't want to do it; one or more of the following three things must be true:

  1. You are an immediate danger to yourself (ie you're suicidal with a plan, means, and an impending time)
  2. You are an immediate danger to others (ie you're homicidal and have a plan, means, and intend to execute it right away)
  3. Your life is in danger because you are unable to provide for basic personal needs like food, clothing, shelter, or personal safety due to psychiatric illness

In the European Union outside site

The European Union takes a less consistent and more liberal approach to involuntary hospitalization, which is called sectioning. Opponents argue that in their search for people who have the potential to be violent and therefore dangerous to society, the Home Office (responsible for the prison system) and the Department of Health are identifying false positives.

Some Unfortunate Events

Before the modern ethics code, things that would never be allowed today did happen.

For example, I've read that some of the doctors who watched lobotomies being done were so horrified they refused to do them. (I wonder how often the same could be said for Civil War surgeons, though, who were doing field amputations in filthy conditions.)

Another example would be Zimbardo's prison experiment, which went too far because everyone got caught up in it. As Zimbardo tells it in the educational film Quiet Rage, one of his graduate assistants said, "I think what you're doing to these boys is terrible." And Zimbardo realized she was right.

So while things do sometimes go too far, sooner or later someone will speak up; other psychological professionals are ethically obligated to speak up and report the situation if they really think something bad is going on.

There also has to be plenty of reason to advocate for more extreme treatments. In the movie Batman Begins, the Scarecrow is shown strapped into a straitjacket after he's been caught. I assume that he had a violent enough reaction to his own hallucinogenic drugs that they had to put him in restraints; after those effects had clearly worn off, though, they would need to remove the restraints and rely on prison walls and doors instead.