National Preventive Mechanism Debriefing is not currently widespread and there is no evidence in the patient history to indicate that this is performed. After many interviews with psychiatry patients who confided in commissions and deplored the unwillingness to speak after traumatising experiences, the NPM is convinced that the necessity to explain, justify and support coercive measures as well as the confrontation with such experiences are vital. Conducting interviews like these on equal footing and dealing with the experiences of mentally ill patients in a respectful manner not only reinforces the self-esteem of the patients and their compliance in availing of psychiatric care services, it also supports questioning internal organisational processes and methods. The NPM dealt with the problem of sexual harassment of female patients by personnel in Annual Report 2015 (see NPM Report 2015, p. 49 et seq.). At the suggestion of the NPM, the Human Rights Advisory Council has deployed a working group led by a representative of the Federal Ministry of Health and Women’s Affairs to address this topic. Sexual harassment by hospital personnel The Human Rights Advisory Council suggests that patients should receive information material about contact persons (ombudsman, victim support groups, patient advocates, etc.) during admission to a medical facility. In the event of incidents inside the medical facility, the patient advocates pursuant to the Hospitalisation of Mentally Ill Persons Act (Unterbringungsgesetz) or the patient advocates of the Laender should be involved by the victim support groups in order to guarantee an objective investigation of incidents. Personnel should be sensitised to the problem in everyday work by distributing guidelines and organising events (e.g. workshops). Furthermore, the existing supervision offer should be used and a regular exchange of views be made available, as it is important not to treat the topic of “sexuality” as off-limits in health care professions. A focal measure is the training and further education of those working in health care professions to increase awareness in connection with subjects of culture, tradition, closeness and distance. The training content should cover the right balance between closeness and distance as well as the borders in the relationship to patients. These issues often become important when dealing with psychiatric patients. It is also necessary to define the term “sexual act“ in training and further education programmes and, in so doing, to point out the boundary between criminal and non-criminal infringements. On the legislative level, a provision based on Section 4 of the Regulation on Education and Training for Medical Practitioners (Ärzteausbildungsordnung) 2015 should be included in the training regulations for all health care professions. This provision stipulates that, within the training framework, a basic attitude and approach is imparted that respects the life, dignity and basic rights of every person regardless of their nationality, ethnic group, religion, skin colour, age, disability, gender, sexual orientation, language, political views and social group. In particular, there must be sensitisation for 121