By the nature of their illness, many if not most patients with anorexia nervosa are treated against their will. This article explores the issue of patient autonomy and right to treatment refusal in the light of justified paternalism as well as a more enriched understanding of autonomy in the context of relationships. A summary follows on the research on patients' perceptions and response to inv...

BACKGROUND Scientific reviewing is a voluntary process to determine if a manuscript deserves publication. REVIEW MEANS: Responsibly Evaluate, Verify and Improve the manuscript, Educate the authors and editors, and Weigh your expert opinion against the submitted work. Provide your review in a respectful, unbiased and timely manner. REVIEW METHODS Make sure editors know about your willingness t...

Despite eliminating incidences of many diseases in the United States, parents are increasingly rejecting vaccines for their children. This article examines the reasons parents offer for doing so. It argues that parents construct a dichotomy between the natural and the artificial, in which vaccines come to be seen as unnecessary, ineffective, and potentially dangerous. Using qualitative data fro...

BACKGROUND: Neonatal Vitamin K prophylaxis is an effective intervention for reducing vitamin K deficiency bleeding. A recently published report of parental refusal of vitamin K prompted an investigation of the prevalence and characteristics of this group, and exploration of whether these same parents were likely to subsequently refuse immunization for their children. METHODS: We conducted a ret...

Current legal regulations do not explicitly state whether the doctor should or should not ignore the patient's refusal to be provided with medical services when such refusal is given by the patients who is temporarily unable to take conscious decisions. The fact that there is no clear jurisdiction over the issue makes the relation between doctor and patient legally complicated. The doctor has n...

In the recent medical ethics literature, several authors have recommended terminal sedation and refusal of hydration and nutrition as important, morally acceptable, and relatively uncontroversial treatment options for end-of-life suffering. However, not all authors use these terms to refer to the same practices. This paper examines the various ways that the terms terminal sedation and refusal o...

An advance directive is a form of ‘living will’, which outlines the treatment desired when an individual lacks the capacity to make a decision of his own. This is called a living will because it is meant to operate whilst the maker is alive, albeit incapacitated. In view of the increasing treatment interventions now available, there is growing recognition that an individual has the right to ref...

A forensic hospital patient's persistent treatment refusal-his or her last recourse and lasting right-virtually ensnarls our social system legally, clinically, and economically. 1 Meanwhile, the right to be mentally ill and the illness gather momentum. It has been recommended that dangerous patients, whose treatment refusal is upheld by the law, be diverted to the criminal justice system for di...

OBJECTIVE To describe the characteristics of young people presenting with school refusal to a child and adolescent psychiatric unit and examine differences between those admitted for inpatient treatment and the rest. METHOD One hundred and ninety-two adolescents who had been assessed or treated for school refusal between 1994 and 1998 at the Rivendell Unit, Sydney, Australia were identified. ...

BACKGROUND The loss of participants in longitudinal studies due to non-contact, refusal or death can introduce bias into the results of such studies. The study described here examines reasons for refusal over three waves of a survey of persons aged >or=70 years. METHODS In a longitudinal study involving three waves, participants were compared to those who refused to participate but allowed an...