An integrated concept of empowerment: a way to avoid coercive treatment

We would like to discuss the various aspects of empowerment in our clinic and inform about our experiences during the last years since we systematically favored empowerment. Our efforts range from empowerment of patients to empowerment of employees. The concept of empowerment includes interdisciplinary planning and documentation of treatment, implementation of milieu therapy, strict application of the concept of informed consent and a policy of avoiding restraint, as for example by unlocked doors of all wards. When inpatient treatment ends, we invite the patient as well as his/her relatives to find together a consent about measures preventing a relapse and about measures to be taken in case of an eventual future crisis. A "Board of Patients" has been founded 3 years ago, a major contribution to the empowerment of the patients. Two of its members will hopefully come with us to the Congress in Dresden. It will be of special interest to learn, what they will report about their own experiences within this process of empowerment. from WPA Thematic Conference. Coercive Treatment in Psychiatry: A Comprehensive Review Dresden, Germany. 6–8 June 2007