Abstract

An emergency room is not a place of calm. An unremitting cacophony of monitors chirp and an orchestra of howling, coughing, and emesis fills the air, to which swirling physicians serve as its conductor. Amidst this storm can reside a hurricane: the 'psych patient.' Conventional moral judgments and preeminent theories of morality hinge on tangential alternatives and options. Thus, moral condemnations are calls for alternative action. However, as this piece argues, the restraint of patients in psychiatric emergencies are situations of no other alternatives and therefore, standing moral debates and judgments lack sufficient strength given the lack of options.