Can we legitimately not decide for another? Political work around a mobile psychiatry team (EMPP)

Psychiatric hospitalizations without consent of homeless persons are exemplary of situations in which professionals must take decisions on behalf of others in the absence of the family. Two main criticisms govern such situations: critiques of interventions under constraint, regarded as a form of excessive interventionism and, critiques of non-intervention, regarded as negligent, or over interventionist. In this context, the problem of the qualification of a situation emerges as particularly acute, as does the question of defining who may legitimately decide and act (or not) against a person's will. This article analyzes the micro daily work that builds the legitimacy of EMPP to decide or, perhaps above all, to not decide for others.