Involuntary medication of patients who are incompetent to stand trial: a review of
empirical studies.
B. Ladds and A. Convit,
Bull. Amer. Acad. Psychiatry & the Law
22(4): 519-32, 1994.
Involuntary administration of antipsychotic medication to pretrial criminal defendants raises
important and controversial questions. These questions arise especially with defendants who have
been adjudicated as incompetent to stand trial and who require medication to be restored to
trial-competency and return to face their pending criminal charges. This subject has been fiercely
debated for decades, but it has received little empirical investigation. We review here the known
empirical studies that have looked at the use of involuntary medication for this population of
individuals. The following nine conceptual areas are explored: subject selection, definition of
'refusal' and related terms, frequency of refusal, characteristics of refusers, reasons for treatment,
reasons for refusal, type and outcome of the review of the refusal, outcome of treatment in the
hospital, and outcome of the criminal charges. Relevant findings are reviewed. Methodological
limitations call for more research in this area. [References: 24]