Magazine of the INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION AGAINST PSYCHIATRIC ASSAULT No. 3 – October 2006

Coercive
treatment is a crime

Resolution of the General
Assembly of the members of the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Psychiatrie-Erfahrener
(a federal association of German psychiatry survivors) on 8. 8. 2006. It
was sent to all courts nationwide.

The
12th Civil Court of Appeal of the German Federal High Court (BGH) with its
resolution of 1.2.2006 (file reference XII ZB 236/05) approved coercive
treatment in psychiatry. However, on the highest level it set a condition
for the lower courts, strict adherence to which we will, of course, insist
upon at every opportunity.

In this regard
we would like to make two things quite clear:

• We are of the
  opinion that any coercive treatment in psychiatry against the will of an
  individual represents a crime and a fundamental violation of the basic the
  right to physical inviolability. This is also underscored by the criticism
  by Professor Wolf-Dieter Narr of the judgement published on the internet
  at: www.die bpe.de/kritik: “the
  adoption by the BGH of this resolution involves several legal errors.”
  From an inquiry covering all courts we know that a quarter of them share
  this opinion, however, as justification for the use of coercive treatment
  many courts will now refer to the obiter dictum of the BGH.
  With this decision the BGH has not settled the matter; quite to the contrary
  in fact. We will now do everything in our power to obtain a just decision
  by our own Federal Constitutional Court (or the European Court of Human
  Rights), because abuse in the form of psychiatric coercive treatment violates
  the human rights and dignity of the individual and has no constitutional
  basis whatsoever.
  
  
• The path to
  Karlsruhe (where the supreme court of Germany is located) will unfortunately
  be delayed by the fact that only the lower courts must fulfill the condition
  of the BGH. In this condition it is clearly laid down that for permission
  for coercive treatment the judge must provide an exact prescription, including
  the active substances, dosage and administration frequency.
  This is
  the reason why we call this judgement the PRESCRIPTION VERDICT, quotation:
  “The matter gives further cause to emphasize that in the permission
  for confinement according to § 1906 Paragraph 1 NR. 2 BGB, any treatment
  condoned by a legal guardian must be described as precisely as possible…,
  and in the case of treatment involving the administration of medicine this
  includes as a rule as exact an indication of the medicine or the
  active substance as possible and their (maximum) dosage as
  well as the administration frequency.”
  

Without these
exact data, any psychiatric coercive treatment is, also according to the
interpretation of the BGH, a severe crime of bodily injury.

Any legal guardian,
who does not want to be confronted with the reproach of being jointly responsible
for coercive treatment in psychiatry, which is inhuman, reprehensible and
a violation of basic rights, is called upon never to approve any such abuse,
let alone to encourage it.

Sample form in the internet for bringing a criminal charge, taking into
account the “prescription verdict”: www.die
bpe.de/strafanzeige.htm

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