[The establishment of mandatory confidentiality in psychiatric practice. I. Survey of legal regulations].

The problem to keep medical secret has its moral, legal and psychological aspects. Although in the submitted paper the importance of moral and psychological aspects of the legal component of the problem, described in this country usually as "mandatory medical secret". The paper analyzes on a historical background the state of legislative norms of medical secret from the last century to the present time. It emphasizes the continuity of legislative solutions which reflect to a certain extent social changes during the period of investigation and demonstrates the present trend of gradual minimalization of state interference and accentuation of personal responsibility, consistent with the List of basic rights and freedom. The author compares also the principles of solution of the problem with selected experience from abroad. In the conclusion he informs on the present state of legal norms which are an amendment of the penal code valid since 1994 and defines the basis of unlawful use of personal data, incl. defined sanctions. Thus strengthening of the legal support of the investigated problem of medical secret was achieved.