ABSTRACT
Psychiatry is a rarity among the medical specialties, in that therapeutic interventions such as hospitalization and the administration of medications can, under certain circumstances, be provided to patients against their will and over their objection. (e ability of physicians in the eld of public health to conne and treat patients with certain communicable diseases such as tuberculosis is perhaps the only analogue in another medical specialty.) Finding the balance between honoring the rights of the individual citizen to liberty and freedom, and protecting the citizen’s own safety and the safety of others, is the challenge faced by any system that allows for involuntary psychiatric connement and treatment. To understand the issues at stake, it is useful to begin by examining the fundamental concepts by which society, through its government, claims the authority to place a person in a psychiatric hospital.
