The confinement of the elderly is legalized

The Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter recently published an article analyzing the bill that eventually will legalize the confinement and the immobilization of geriatric patients. Every day the geriatric patients are deprived of their human rights. The staff may lock up and immobilize the patients without these crimes being punished. The geriatric patients legally find themselves in a kind of no man´s land, affirms Catharina Morthenson Ekelöf, secretary of the National Board of Healthcare and Social Affairs and of the Group of Investigation on Dementia. The aim of this group is, apart from lending support to the relatives of the patients, to find a solution to the coercive illegal methods used by the personnel against the elderly. Morthenson Ekelöf affirms that the Group is trying to find not only legal solutions, allthough it will have to produce a proposal on the coercive methods that may be used legally against the patients. It has been verified that the staff of the geriatric institutions in Sweden, routinely confines and immobilizes the patients without justification, since these coercive methods are being used only as a preventive measure. Responsible authorities also are planning the reduction of the personnel of the geriatric institutions, to be replaced by alarms, keys and chains. The Swedish government is at present analyzing the Norwegian bill regarding coercive methods against the geriatric patients with a view to adapting it in Sweden.

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