The German S3 guidelines on prevention of coercion and treatment of aggressive behavior: from evidence to consensus, from consensus to implementation

The German S3 guidelines on prevention of coercion: prevention and therapy of aggressive behavior in adults (2018) are cross-sectional guidelines that in addition to medical scientific evidence also touch to a great extent on questions of ethics and law as well as organizational structures of the healthcare system. Accordingly, in addition to the research on evidence, the consensus process also had a strong weighting in the development of the recommendations. The appropriate participation of experts from various fields and their representation in the consensus group was therefore of central importance. Particularly important is the implementation into clinical practice by means of the recommendations for implementation of the German Association for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (DGPPN) for psychiatric wards, psychiatric clinics, and care regions. For psychiatric wards, the recommendations are being evaluated with a multicenter randomized controlled trial (RCT), the PreVCo study.