Introduction
delirium, post-traumatic symptoms, psychiatric
Although coercive measures are ethically justified in life-threatening clinical situations (such as severe delirium) or in most serious endangerment of others, their use is restricted to those situations where no other alternatives can be employed. Their potentially severe consequences, including a deterioration of the therapeutic relationship and the treatment course, subjective feelings of punishment and distress, the development of post-traumatic symptoms or physical injuries must be acknowledged and considered in decision-making processes [Besides the objective use of coercive measures, the aspect of subjective or perceived coercion has been highlighted as an important outcome in the context of psychiatric care. Subjective coercion can be defined as the patients’ perceptions, views and feelings related to their experience of coercion. High levels of perceived coercion are related to low patient satisfaction and negative attitudes towards hospital treatment [Coercive measures are often perceived by patients as extremely humiliating and dehumanizing [The present work aims at investigating the potential relationship between patients’ appraisal of the justification of coercive measures and the level of subjective distress they experienced during their application. It was hypothesized that the perception of coercive measures as justified by arbitrariness or other factors solely related to staff members or structural issues would increase the experienced distress.