Judgment neglect no reason for psychiatric forced accommodation

Federal Constitutional Court: Mentally ill no longer dangerous
But an otherwise threatening neglect does not justify compulsory placement in a psychiatric clinic. Prerequisite is a danger to life or health, stressed the Federal Constitutional Court in a resolution published on Tuesday, November 29, 2016 (Ref .: 2 BvR 1739/14).

Thus it ended the forced accommodation of a man from the Rhineland. He could not sleep in one night in 1994 and suddenly had a hallucination and heard voices. They ordered him to kill his wife. Under the influence of these voices, he took his pillow and pressed it against his sleeping wife on her face to stifle her. The woman woke up, struggled and finally escaped.

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The district court of Duisburg then ordered the accommodation of the man in a psychiatric hospital. Since then, this measure has been enforced intermittently.

Last, the district court Kleve 2014 ordered the continuation of the accommodation. In the same year, the Higher Regional Court (OLG) Düsseldorf confirmed this decision. The expert no longer considers the man dangerous, but threatens a "neglect dynamics".

As the Federal Constitutional Court decided, this violates the man in his rights of freedom. Interventions in these rights are allowed "only for particularly important reasons".

Here, the experts had explicitly stressed that the man had worked up his act and its underlying schizophrenia. The clinic had pointed out that he was well prepared for medication and also showed no resistance to taking his medication. In the opinion of the expert, at most property offenses are to be feared, but violence against people is no longer.

Further compulsory placement was therefore not justified, the Federal Constitutional Court found in its decision of 16 November 2016, now published in writing. Mwo