In 1999, a project was started to develop normative guidelines for professionals in order to improve
quality of care around seclusion in psychiatric practice.11 In this project, eight quality criteria were formulated.
These quality criteria shift the attention for the legal question of when coercion is allowed to the
question how care could prevent coercion. Concepts and normative principles from ethics of care (responsibility,
respect, openness, and dialogue) were used to theoretically underpin the quality criteria. Joan
Tronto’s theory on (phases of) care,12 for instance, supported the guideline that processes resulting in seclusion
should be evaluated with patients in order to prevent new incidents