Involuntary hospitalization of the mentally ill as a moral issue

Abstract

Conflict exists between medical model and civil liberties approaches to involuntary hospitalization for mental illness. The amassing and analysis of data will not resolve this conflict because the two sides view the problem from differing moral vantage points. Medical model adherents are influenced chiefly by utilitarian or consequentialist considerations, while the civil libertarians take more of a deontological or absolutist position. Opinions about such issues as hospitalization criteria of dangerousness versus medical necessity and the relative role of rights versus obligations and of autonomy versus paternalism can be seen largely to depend on such underlying value judgments. Neither side has a monopoly on truth or right in the question of involuntary hospitalization.