Psychiatric patients who went on hunger strike sometimes had to be "aggressively treated", a doctor at the Central Mental Hospital in Dublin has said. But he stressed intervention would only occur where the hunger strike was illness-driven and not a rational decision, and that it would never involve force feeding.
Dr Charles Smith said the Tokyo Agreement on the treatment of hunger strikers had provided doctors with important ethical guidelines. According to this, anyone who decided rationally and logically to starve himself to death has that right. This had proved very important for doctors treating hunger strikers in Northern Ireland.
This meant that if a serious hunger strike was in prospect "someone has to get in fairly early to assess whether the person is sane".
People could go on hunger strike because they were psychologically ill. For example, he had had patients who believed staff were trying to poison them. "This is an illness-driven hunger strike and we have an obligation to treat the illness and that sorts out the hunger strike." However, he added that they would never be reduced to force feeding.
Dr Smith was addressing the 17th Congress of the International Academy of Legal Medicine, meeting in Dublin this week.