ArticlePsychiatry, psychology, and law : an interdisciplinary journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law2025
The benefits and harms of inpatient involuntary psychiatric treatment: a scoping review.
Article in Psychiatry, psychology, and law : an interdisciplinary journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Patterns of court-ordered behavioral health evaluations among extreme risk protection order respondents in Washington State.Injury epidemiology · 2026Article
- Identifying challenges in concurrent mental health and substance use disorder care: qualitative findings from an e-Delphi study in British Columbia, Canada.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- When Psychiatric Services Become a Waiting Room: Situational Analysis of Involuntary Commitment and Treatment as Experienced by Patients and Nurses.Clinical nursing research · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This scoping review examined quantitative research comparing involuntary inpatient groups with voluntary inpatients or other comparator group. Ten themes were identified: patient knowledge of legal status, experienced or perceived coercion, effects on medication use, clinical effects measured on outcome scales, effects on psychiatric readmission, use of restraints and seclusion, effects on suicide and deaths, patient satisfaction, length of stay and carer experiences. The review found that involuntary inpatient admission was associated with harms including increased subjective and objective coercion, increased cost and decreased patient satisfaction. In addition, it found that there may be significant confusion among both voluntary and involuntary patients regarding their legal rights. However, patients admitted on an involuntary basis experienced greater improvements in symptoms and function, possibly due to greater symptom burden prior to admission. Involuntary treatment carries the potential for both benefit and harms that should be acknowledged and mitigated by service providers.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.