In 2025, the Parliamentary Ombudsman visited Denmark’s eight departments of forensic psychiatry. In his thematic report, which was published in English today, the Ombudsman summarises the results of the thematic visits and makes a number of general recommendations.
One of the matters the Ombudsman focused on during the visits was the departments of forensic psychiatry’s work ensuring that patients with treatment orders and placement orders are not hospitalised for longer than necessary.
The Ombudsman concludes that both management and staff generally focus on ensuring that the hospitalisations are not extended longer than necessary and that deliberations about this are included in the work with the patients’ treatment.
However, the Ombudsman also received information indicating that there can be a risk of some patients being hospitalised for longer than there are grounds for from a treatment perspective. Among other things, various assessments of the patients’ needs in relation to, for instance, housing and support after discharge and the dialogue in this respect could risk affecting the duration of the hospitalisations.
‘In my thematic report, I generally recommend that the departments of forensic psychiatry have increased focus on ensuring quick, smooth and solution-oriented dialogue with the municipalities in connection with discharge of patients. I will discuss both this and the other general recommendations in the thematic report with the relevant authorities’, says Parliamentary Ombudsman Christian Britten Lundblad.
In the thematic report, the Ombudsman also makes general recommendations for, among other things, the written documentation in connection with forced immobilisations.
In addition, the thematic report describes the cases that the Ombudsman has started on his own initiative based on the monitoring visits. The cases concern the departments of psychiatry’s house rules, seclusion in own room (area restriction) and the special departments for people in surrogate custody, which became possible to establish as from 1 January 2022.
Read the whole thematic report.
Read the Ombudsman’s previous news item ‘The Ombudsman looks into conditions for patients in forensic psychiatric departments’ (news item of 28 January 2025).
Further details:
Director of International Relations Klavs Kinnerup Hede, kkh@ombudsmanden.dk