Original title: Legislative differences regarding coercive measures in mental health care for children and adolescents across European countries
Konsta Hakala, Tjaša Vranetič, Astrid Moell, Jörg Michael Fegert +3 · October 2026
Researchers surveyed mental health representatives across 24 European countries about rules for restraining or isolating young psychiatric patients. Most countries do not have laws written specifically for children, instead applying adult rules to minors. While almost all require an immediate danger before acting, only six nations set a maximum time limit on these measures. In some places, staff re-evaluate a restrained child every 15 minutes, but elsewhere, seclusionThe forced isolation of a patient alone in a locked room that they cannot freely leave. checks can wait three weeks. The results expose large ethical concerns across Europe.
Imagine a group of different schools sending disruptive students to quiet detention rooms to calm down. In some schools, a teacher checks on the student every few minutes, while other schools have no rules on how long a student can be left alone or when someone must look in on them. Here, different European countries act like those disconnected schools, creating wildly uneven oversight and safety rules for young people in mental health facilities depending entirely on their location.
Children and teenagers in psychiatric care face severe practices like physical restraint or isolation, often governed only by rules written for adults. With only a few nations capping how long these measures can last, young patients experience drastically different protections depending on which border they live within. Exposing these legal disparities is necessary to push for shared, ethical standards that protect vulnerable youth.
The findings rely on questionnaire data from 35 respondents representing 24 countries, leaving one-third of ESCAP member nations unaccounted for. The abstract notes ethical concerns and discrepancies between law and practice, but does not provide clinical incidence data or measure patient outcomes.
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Legislative differences regarding coercive measures in mental health care for children and adolescents across European countries — Konsta Hakala, Tjaša Vranetič, Astrid Moell et al. — European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry — doi:10.1007/s00787-026-03185-2
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.