There are two ways of treatment of psychiatric patients: voluntary and involuntary. Involuntary hospitalization is a legal procedure used to force an individual to receive inpatient treatment for a mental health disorder against his or her will. the legal justifications vary somewhat from state to state, but this treatment decision requires two elements: the presence of a severe mental disorder that deprives the individual of the capacity to make treatment decisions and the likelihood of harm to self or to others.

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the social-demographic differences in involuntarily hospitalized patients during one year period in Psychiatric Hospital in Sarajevo.

Next characteristics have been studied closely: sex, age, educational background, working status, marital status, ways of supporting, treatment turnout. Also, patients were analyzed according to diagnosis and previous hospitalization. It was found that, in the Psychiatric Hospital of Sarajevo, from 544 hospitalization in one year period, 32 (5.88%) of them were involuntary ones.

An average involuntarily hospitalized patient during one year period in Psychiatric Hospital in Sarajevo was a man, 35 years old, single, with high-school education, unemployed, on social-aid, already three times hospitalized with diagnosis F 20.0.