Rains LS, et al. - In order to assess why annual incidence of involuntary hospitalization in England and some other higher-income countries is on the rise, researchers evaluated the variation in involuntary annual hospitalization rates between countries and compared those trends over time. Further, they examined if variations in involuntary hospitalization rates are correlated to variations in legislation, demographics, economics, and health-care provision. As per data, countries vary largely, with Austria having the highest (282 per 100,000 individuals) and Italy the lowest (14.5 per 100,000 individuals) most recently available involuntary hospitalization rates. A lower rate of absolute poverty, higher GDP and health-care spending per capita, a higher proportion of foreign-born individuals in a population, and larger numbers of inpatient beds were noted to be linked with a higher annual incidence of involuntary hospitalization, however, the associations were not strong. Involuntary hospitalization rates seem not to be influenced by other country-level demographic, economic, and health-care delivery indicators nor features of the legislative system. A more fine-grained analysis of the relationships between involuntary hospitalization and social context, clinical practice, and how legislation is implemented in practice may help understanding why involuntary hospitalization rates vary so much.