Use of informal coercion in community mental health care

Background/Objectives: Coercion usually has been equated with legal detention. Many ‘voluntary’ patients however perceive their community mental health care as coerced. The MacArthur study in the US indicated that up to half of public mental health patients had experienced pressures to comply with treatment (‘leverage’). It is not clear if equivalent high levels of informal coercion are present elsewhere apart from in the USA. We aimed to establish if this was so in England, how it might vary between different clinical groups and how they viewed it. Methods: Structured interviews were conducted with outpatients…