Incapacity certification

Medical certification of incapacity in guardianship applications: conceptualising capacity.

Aims and method To examine how capacity is recorded in practice and compare this with the statutory definition, medical reports accompanying a random 10% sample (183 applications; 360 reports) of guardianship applications granted in 2011-2012 were examined. Results Clinicians did not explicitly use the statutory definition of capacity in 47.5% of reports. Over half of applications (56.4%) did n...

Medical evidence of incapacity.

Mental health and incapacity legislation

I enjoyed the article by Dawson & Szmukler (2006) because I like to keep up to date with legal and ethical issues in mental health. However, their claim for equivalence between mental and physical diseases sits uneasily with scientific papers published in the Journal. Shaw et al (2006) found that schizophrenia had a prevalence of 5% in perpetrators of homicide, compared with 1% in the general p...

Mental health and incapacity legislation

The laudable aim of Dawson & Szmukler (2006) of eliminating discrimination against those with mental illness by a fusion of mental health and incapacity legislation may not be achievable with their proposals. They address the ethical difficulties of treating ‘patients with fluctuating mental conditions who temporarily regain their capacity after medication, and again refuse necessary treatment’...

Mental health and incapacity legislation.

I enjoyed the article by Dawson & Szmukler (2006) because I like to keep up to date with legal and ethical issues in mental health. However, their claim for equivalence between mental and physical diseases sits uneasily with scientific papers published in the Journal. Shaw et al (2006) found that schizophrenia had a prevalence of 5% in perpetrators of homicide, compared with 1% in the general p...