Compulsory admissions of patients with mental disorders: State of the art on ethical and legislative aspects in 40 European countries.

BACKGROUND: Compulsory admission procedures of patients with mental disorders vary between countries in Europe. The Ethics Committee of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) launched a survey on involuntary admission procedures of patients with mental disorders in 40 countries to gather information from all National Psychiatric Associations that are members of the EPA to develop recommendations for improving involuntary admission processes and promote voluntary care. METHODS: The survey focused on legislation of involuntary admissions and key actors involved in the admission procedure as well as most common reasons for involuntary admissions. RESULTS: We analyzed the survey categorical data in themes, which highlight that both medical and legal actors are involved in involuntary admission procedures. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that legal reasons for compulsory admission should be reworded in order to remove stigmatization of the patient, that raising awareness about involuntary admission procedures and patient rights with both patients and family advocacy groups is paramount, that communication about procedures should be widely available in lay-language for the general population, and that training sessions and guidance should be available for legal and medical practitioners. Finally, people working in the field need to be constantly aware about the ethical challenges surrounding compulsory admissions.

Controlling anxiety in physicians and nurses working in intensive care units using emotional intelligence items as an anxiety management tool in Iran.

INTRODUCTION: Today, anxiety is one of the most common problems of mankind, to the extent that we could claim that it predisposes human to many physical illnesses, mental disorders, behavioral disturbances, and inappropriate reactions. The intensive care unit is a stressful environment for its staff, especially physicians and nurses. These stresses may have negative effects on the mental health and performance of the nurses and physicians. But the complications caused by this stress can be prevented by training emotional intelligence components. In this study, the impact of training emotional intelligence components on stress and anxiety in nurses and expert physicians is examined. METHODOLOGY: A cross-interventional, pre- to post-, case and control group design was used and inferential study design was implemented. Our study included 150 registered hospitals physicians and nurses, who were widely distributed. In the study, a ten-question demographic questionnaire, a 20-question situational anxiety Berger (overt) questionnaire, and a 133-question Bar-on emotional intelligence questionnaire were used. RESULTS: Research results indicate that average score for the situational anxiety of the case group in nurses was 47.20 before the intervention and it was reduced to 42.00 after the intervention, and in physicians was 40.46 before the intervention and it decreased to 33.66 after implementation of training items of emotional intelligence, which indicates the impact of training of emotional intelligence components on reduction of situational anxiety. The average score of situational anxiety of control group nurses was 46.73 before the intervention and it decreased to 45.70. In physicians, it was 38.33 before the intervention and it increased to 39.40 during post-test. However, t-test did not confirmed a statistically significant difference between the average score of situational anxiety of both case and control groups before the intervention, and there was a statistically significant difference between the average score of both case and control groups after training components of emotional intelligence (P = 0.000). CONCLUSION: Training emotional intelligence components reduces situational anxiety of nurses and physicians working in intensive care units and their emotional intelligence score increased and situational anxiety score was significantly reduced.