Trends in the use of coercive measures in Finnish psychiatric hospitals: a register analysis of the past two decades.

Despite the decreasing national level of coercive measures used in Finnish psychiatric hospitals, the overall reduction has been small during the last two decades. These results have implications on the future development of structured guidelines and interventions for preventing and more effectively managing challenging situations. Clinical guidelines and staff education related to the use of coercive measures should be critically assessed to ensure that the staff members working with vulnerable patient populations in psychiatric hospitals are ethically competent.