The constitutional right to refuse antipsychotic medications.

"Rotting with their rights on": constitutional theory and clinical reality in drug refusal by psychiatric patients.

The recently formulated right of hospitalized psychiatric patients to refuse medication l has drawn increasing attention in the medical and legal literature and in the courts. Unfortunately, almost all that has been written approaches the subject theoretically, from the viewpoint of the development of constitutional law, without paying sufficient attention to the clinical realities or to the ac...

Involuntary patients' right to refuse medication: impact of the Riese decision on a California inpatient unit.

On June 22, 1989, the California Supreme Court allowed the Appellate Court decision in the right to refuse treatment case, Riese v. St. Mary's Hospital to stand. The court ruled that absent a judicial determination of incompetence, antipsychotic drugs cannot be administered to involuntarily committed mental patients in non-emergency situations without their informed consent. Much concern was ex...

"Mind control," "synthetic sanity," "artificial competence," and genuine confusion: legally relevant effects of antipsychotic medication.

Several recent court decisions have granted committed mental patients statutory or constitutional rights to refuse unwanted treatment provided that the patient did not present dangers to himself or others.1 Typically, the treatment in question has involved a class of drugs referred to as "antipsychotic medication." Although these cases have created a storm of controversy in both the medical and...

The right to "just say no": a history and analysis of the right to refuse antipsychotic drugs.

An Involuntary Mental Patient's Right to Refuse Treatment with Antipsychotic Drugs: A Reassessment