Advance decision and mental health
If a person who had a lot of suicide attempts were to put in an advance decision not to be seen at the hospital (following stabilisation) by phychiatric liaison team, would this be likely to be overridden? We are not refusing medical treatment just phychiatric liasion assessment
I’m assuming you mean physical stabilisation? Whilst it will all depend on the individual circumstances, of course, an advance decision such as that surely comes close to saying ‘I do not want to be considered for detention under the Mental Health Act’ which I suspect is the sort of advance decision that would be overridden as soon as the clinical view was that this would be a good idea. After all, contemporaneous refusal of consent in relation to MHA assessment doesn’t stop it happening.
This is a personal opinion not that of CQC.
Mat Kinton
National MHA Policy Advisor, CQC
Hi, not to avoid detention, just the liasion team seem to really dislike me and always write ‘no suicidal intent’ even when 80-100 paracetamol taken within 20 minutes. In 5/6 overdoses nothing has ever changed in treatment and nothing ever useful happens to help, which I put down to phyc team disliking me