Whether treatment decision-making capacity can be meaningfully applied to patients with a diagnosis of "personality disorder" is examined. Patients presenting to a psychiatric emergency clinic with threats of self-harm are considered, two having been assessed and reviewed in detail. It was found that capacity can be meaningfully assessed in such patients, although the process is more complex than in patients with diagnoses of a more conventional kind. The process of assessing capacity in such patients is very time-consuming and may become, in itself, a therapeutic intervention.
This is an application by a NHS Trust for declaratory relief in respect of a man (whom I shall call "Dr. A") who is on hunger strike in the Trust hospital. The relief sought by the Trust is in short a declaration : (i) that he lacks capacity to litigate and to make decisions in respect of his nutrition and hydration; and (ii) that it is lawful for the Trust to administer artificial nutrition and hydration.
The government is promoting cognitive behavioural therapy as a cost-effective, no-nonsense remedy for our psychological ills. It's the triumph of a market-driven view of the human psyche, says Darian Leader
Women who have an elective legal abortion do not experience depression or long term psychological distress afterward, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore, Maryland (Contraception 2008;78:436-50, (doi:10:1016/j.contraception.2008.07.005). They reviewed the best 21 studies published in the past 20 years, involving thousands of women.
I'm not the only woman who has tried to make herself disappear. Anorexia nervosa, the disorder of pathological self-starvation, is on the rise, with an 80% increase in hospital admissions among teenage girls over the last decade. Pressure groups and parents complain that there is still a chronic shortage of specialist care, with many GPs apparently reluctant to refer patients for treatment in the early stages of the disease. And this approach leaves children and their families to struggle on alone - usually until it is too late for simple intervention.
Potentially dangerous psychiatric patients are being fitted with GPS tracking devices to prevent them absconding on day leave. The South London and Maudsley NHS Trust has attached the £600 ankle devices on more than 60 medium and high risk patients under the pilot scheme. The trust said it had consulted patients and families. The devices, which can track a person's location to within a few yards, are already used for dementia sufferers. They came into use in south London after rapist Terence O'Keefe, 39, escaped from custody at King's College Hospital before strangling 73-year-old David Kemp.
Judge approves forced Caesarean for mentally-ill woman Doctors have been granted permission to perform an urgent Caesarean section on a mentally-ill woman with diabetes. High Court judge Mr Justice Hayden gave specialists at the Royal Free London NHS Trust approval after a five-hour hearing at the Court of Protection. He said the decision was "draconian" but necessary because the mother's life may be in danger. The woman, 32, who is 32 weeks pregnant, was deemed unable to make the decision over how to give birth. The ruling, late on Friday, came after doctors applied for permission to carry out the delivery in order that the patient's "unstable mental state" could be treated. A specialist from the trust told the Court of Protection in London, which specialises in issues relating to the sick and vulnerable, that their priority was "keeping this woman alive".