Involuntary placement in Italy

Salize & Dressing (2004) show figures for various indicators for involuntary placements in psychiatric facilities in the European Union countries. According to the authors, Italy was unable to provide nationwide data from the 1990s. Therefore, in Table 1 they showed data from the Lombardy region, concerning only the percentage of in-patient episodes that were involuntary placements for an ‘unknown year’. Data from Lombardy on number and rate of involuntary placements per 100 000 population are indicated as ‘not available’.

Table Involuntary placement in Italy

Year	Involuntary placements
	Lombardy1			Italy2
	n	Percentage of all in-patient episodes	Per 100 000 population	n	Percentage of all in-patient episodes	Per 100 000 population
1996	2832	12.3	37	14 882	10.9	26
1997	2818	11.6	37	15 048	11	26
1998	2803	12.1	36
1999	2792	12.6	36
2000	2794	11.8	35
2001	2487	10.8	31

Actually, nationwide data have been published up to 1997, and data from the Lombardy region are available for the period 1995-2001 (see Table). The Italian data can be found on the website of the National Institute of Statistics (http://www.istat.it/Societ-/Sanita-e-p/Storico) and those of Lombardy on the website of the Regional Directorate of Health (http://www.sanita.regione.lombardia.it/documenti).

Also, Salize & Dressing report a rate of 11 involuntary placements per 100 000 for France. This is not correct, as can be seen looking at absolute numbers of 61 063 involuntary admissions in France. Given the French population of about 59.3 million, the correct rate is 103 per 100 000 population.