Mental Health and Behavior Control

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Veatch ◽  
Amy Haddad ◽  
E. J. Last
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Practice ◽  
Decisional Capacity ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
Risks And Benefits ◽  
Patient’S Autonomy ◽  
Harm To Others ◽  
Right To Refuse Treatment ◽  
The Right ◽  
And Behavior

This chapter focuses on the special challenges of ethical problems in mental health and behavioral health settings. The basic elements of informed consent, the special problems with decisional capacity, and the right to refuse treatment are examined in the light of mental health practice. The controversy that results from various understandings and meanings of the cause and treatment of mental illness are explored. Pharmacological and medical therapies such as electroconvulsive therapy and aversive therapy are discussed, with a focus on the parties who are in a position to judge the risks and benefits of such therapies. The interests of third parties are also explored as justification for overriding a patient’s autonomy because of potential serious harm to others.

scholarly journals Detained patients and the right to refuse treatment

2014 ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Paul Bowen
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Interested Party ◽  
Mental Health Act ◽  
Human Rights Act ◽  
Human Rights Act 1998 ◽  
Right To Refuse Treatment ◽  
The Right ◽  
Court Of Appeal ◽  
Right To Refuse

<p>R (Wilkinson) v. Broadmoor RMO (1) Mental Health Act Commission (2) Secretary of State for Health (Interested party) [2001] EWCA Civ 1545<br />Court of Appeal (22nd October 2001) Simon Brown LJ, Brooke LJ and Hale LJ</p><p>A detained patient’s right to refuse treatment to which he or she objects has been greatly strengthened by a recent decision of the Court of Appeal, applying the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998, although in reaching its decision the Court of Appeal has posed as many questions for the future of the law in this area as it has answered.</p>

Mental Health Acts in Canada

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALISTER BROWNE
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Admission Criteria ◽  
Involuntary Admission ◽  
Mentally Disordered ◽  
Methodological Question ◽  
Right To Refuse Treatment ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right To Refuse

There are 12 different Mental Health Acts (MHAs) in Canada, all of which provide for the involuntary confinement of the mentally disordered to protect both them from themselves and others from them. The Acts differ in many ways, but three issues stand out above all: (1) involuntary admission criteria, (2) the right to refuse treatment, and (3) who has the authority to authorize treatment. I first describe how the MHAs differ on these issues. I then take up the methodological question of how to select or construct a MHA from the many, all of which have something to be said for them. Finally, I apply this test to the three main issues in dispute and identify which solutions would be in an ideal MHA. My aim in this last is not to settle the issues but to engage with them and so deepen our understanding of what is at stake.

The Mental Patients' Rights Movement and Mental Health Institutional Change

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Brown
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Patients ◽  
Patients Rights ◽  
Advisory Boards ◽  
Patient Representatives ◽  
Democratic Rights ◽  
Right To Refuse Treatment ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Right ◽  
Health Administrators

The mental patients' rights movement has added to the widespread critique of institutional psychiatry and provided leadership in opposing treatment methods such as electroshock, psychosurgery, and overdrugging, which are dangerous and regressive not only to patients, but to the expanded population of non-institutionalized persons as well. The movement has had some success in court cases for democratic rights, such as the right to treatment, the right to refuse treatment, patient labor, and commitment law. At the same time, patients' rights demands have been partly coopted by mental health administrators. In a number of cases, mental health officials supported patients' rights litigation because it enabled them to speed up their deinstitutionalization programs. Overall, the conjuncture of the movement with economic impetus toward deinstitutionalization has allowed mental health planners to use the patients' rights issues to justify their essentially fiscal policy. Providers and administrators have set up advocacy offices, posted patients' bills of rights, and incorporated ex-patient representatives on advisory boards. Yet mental health administrators are generally opposed to a broad application of patients' rights.

scholarly journals The Empathic Ward: Reality and Resistance in Mental Health Reform

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leighton C. Whitaker ◽  
Arthur J. Deikman
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Drug Therapy ◽  
Psychiatric Hospital ◽  
Treatment Program ◽  
Health Reform ◽  
Psychological Treatment ◽  
Hospital Ward ◽  
Mental Health Reform ◽  
Right To Refuse Treatment ◽  
The Right

This article provides perspective on our experiment to change a psychiatric hospital ward from reliance on drug therapy to psychological treatment. Resistances to the change took many forms, including delaying publication of the results for nearly a decade. Although successful, the treatment program itself was never adopted. The work did have a major impact on the “right to refuse treatment” case originally titled Rogers v. Okin (1979), which barred forced medication and involuntary seclusion except in certain emergencies if an outside consultant agreed. Two publications (Deikman & Whitaker, 1979; Whitaker & Deikman, 1980) described much of the program and its vicissitudes but did not include some of the more resisted features reported in this article.

More on the right to refuse treatment.

1982 ◽  
Vol 37 (8) ◽  
pp. 974-975
Author(s):  
Thomas G. Gutheil
Keyword(s):  
Right To Refuse Treatment ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right To Refuse
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