Mental capacity-why look for a paradigm shift?

Med Law Rev

Reader/Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist. King's College London, Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, London SE5 8AF, UK.

Published: August 2023

AI Article Synopsis

  • The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has been challenging how we view mental capacity for the last 10 years, suggesting that new ideas should replace the old ones.
  • This article looks at why these new ideas haven’t been widely accepted in laws and if they really should be accepted.
  • Finally, the article argues that we should focus on properly figuring out if someone can make their own decisions about important things, and the ideas discussed could apply not just in England and Wales but more broadly too.

Article Abstract

Challenges to the legitimacy of mental capacity over the past 10 years have been spearheaded by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the treaty body for the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This challenge has been asserted to have produced a 'paradigm shift'. In this article, we examine why that interpretation has had such limited traction in the legal policy arena, and whether it should have traction. We also analyse whether the Committee has subtly but importantly shifted its position. We then develop an argument that the true goal, compatible with the CRPD, is the satisfactory determination of whether a person has or lacks mental capacity to make or take a relevant decision. Our article contextualises multi-disciplinary, research-informed guidelines designed as a contribution to satisfactory determination. While our article is based upon the position in England and Wales, we suggest that our conclusions are of wider application.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10452055PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/medlaw/fwac052DOI Listing

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