Are the conditions for treatment and care under compulsion sufficiently stringent?
7. We are concerned that the effect of the conditions will be to bring under formal powers many who ought to be treated informally, particularly when the criterion of ‘the protection of others’ is invoked. The removal of the requirement to show the necessity of compulsion when a person over 16 is at substantial risk of causing serious harm to others seems to undermine the possibility of that person receiving treatment voluntarily. The option of compulsion must be available but, if the patient consents, alternatives ought not be discounted solely because of risk. 8. The condition that appropriate treatment is available is at first sight welcome, but we believe that to avoid compulsion without an adequate clinical rationale treatment should normally be required to be of therapeutic benefit to the patient. Intensely difficult dilemmas of human rights and professional ethics arise when patients are judged to pose a substantial risk of harm to self or others but their disorder is considered
