Psychiatric Advance Directives: Solution or Hazard?

Patricia Backlar, Ph.D., Research Associate Professor of Bioethics, Portland State University
Michele Magar, Magar & Milstein.

A Psychiatric Advance Directive is a legal document which describes a person's healthcare treatment and non-treatment preferences. Written when a person is considered legally competent to make medical decisions, it takes effect during periods when a person is declared incompetent to give informed consent to medical treatment.  It is designed to guide and limit the type of treatment a person receives during involuntary commitment to mental health facilities. However, this new legal tool remains largely unproven thus far. This workshop will examine whether psychiatric advance directives:

• are valuable as a recovery tool,
• meet the needs of mental health consumers,
• are legally enforceable,
• can be used to prevent involuntary mental health treatment,
• can be used in the context of involuntary outpatient commitment, and
• can be written with procedures that ensure that the document reflects the wishes of the author, rather than family members or mental health providers.

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