Bosanac Sanja Babic
Andrija Stampar School of Public Health, Medical School, University of Zagreb, Croatia.
Med Law. 2002;21(1):87-106.
This paper presents and critically analyses the provisions of the Croatian Act of 1998 on the Protection of Persons with a Mental Illness relating to involuntary hospitalisation and the rights of psychiatric patients. This analysis also encompasses the amendments and supplements of 1999. The paper identifies the problems that have arisen in the application of this Act and discusses the causes of these problems. The paper concludes that the passing of new psychiatric legislation or any radical reform of the existing legislation must be preceded by a comprehensive discussion by professionals, scientists and the broader public, which would result in the passing of legislation which can be implemented in terms of organisation, staffing and financing. Without this, any new psychiatric legislation, even if it met the highest international legal standards, would be exposed to the danger of being merely declarative, which would bring most harm to mental patients themselves.
本文介绍并批判性地分析了克罗地亚1998年《精神疾病患者保护法》中有关非自愿住院治疗及精神病患者权利的条款。该分析还涵盖了1999年的修订和补充内容。本文指出了该法案在实施过程中出现的问题，并探讨了这些问题产生的原因。本文的结论是，在通过新的精神病学立法或对现有立法进行任何激进改革之前，专业人士、科学家和广大公众必须进行全面讨论，从而制定出在组织、人员配备和资金方面都可实施的立法。否则，任何新的精神病学立法，即使符合最高的国际法律标准，也有沦为一纸空文的风险，而这将对精神病患者自身造成最大的伤害。
