Ethicist proposes new category for psychiatric patients to justify instances of compulsory treatment: 'Nonvoluntary treatment,' would distinguish psychiatric patients who refuse help but likely would have accepted it in a healthy state of mind from the traditional -- ScienceDaily

"The 'involuntary treatment' of unwilling psychiatric patients has long been accepted as necessary in some cases, for the sake of patients and society, though it can raise serious ethical concerns as well as legal barriers. In a new article, an ethicist argues that some of the concerns about treating patients without their consent would be alleviated if the mental health profession recognized an important distinction among these cases....[Quoting Dominic Sisti:] "A patient may have previously expressed a wish to be treated while in crisis -- in which case, a treatment framed as involuntary is actually something else. The proposed concept of nonvoluntary treatment provides a more precise categorization of such cases." ..."