This paper describes and analyzes the decision-making process for psychiatric hospitalization using an ethnographic approach. It concentrates on the issue of dangerousness and risk, which are the conditions that define hospitalization criteria from a psychiatric perspective. It analyzes the psychoanalytical arguments regarding hospitalization as a therapeutic strategy. The results from the analysis show that decision on whether to hospitalize an individual are made through the practical, situational and contextual knowledge presented on each occasion. The professional's institutional position and membership of a specialty, the theoretical readings of the patient's situation and, finally, the availability of alternative resources are factors involved in such decisions.
Hospitalization; Dangerousness; Psychiatry; Psychoanalysis