title: Patient capacity in mental health care: legal overview.
abstract: The discriminatory effects of categorizing psychiatric patients into competent and incompetent, have urged lawyers, philosophers and health care professionals to seek a functional approach to capacity assessment. Dutch and English law have produced some guidelines concerning this issue. So far, most legal systems under investigation have concentrated on alternatives for informed consent by the patient in case of mental incapacity, notably substitute decision-making, intervention of a judge and advance directives. It is hard to judge the way in which the law may further adapt to a more functional assessment of capacity, because the nature of law shows that legal reforms usually take place only when new methods have been accepted by the field. This is not yet the case today.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Law, University of Leuven, Belgium. h.nys@zw.unimaas.nl
authors.forename: Herman
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nys
authors.forename: Sander
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Welie
authors.forename: Tina
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Garanis-Papadatos
authors.forename: Dimitris
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ploumpidis
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making / Q000941:ethics; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D016743:Mental Competency / Q000523:psychology*; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008605:Mental Health Services / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D009426:Netherlands; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D006113:United Kingdom