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Consent for treatment in mental handicap hospitals in Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Steven C. Young*
Affiliation:
The Psychiatry of Mental Handicap, Lynebank Hospital, Halbeath Road, Dunfermline KY11 4UW
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Consent for operation/treatment of a mentally handicapped person has been an issue stimulating much discussion. Generally, in the past, relatives or consultants responsible for their care have given ‘consent’ for treatment when mentally handicapped people were unable to do so. It was appreciated that legally this was not valid once the person was over the age of 16 and so we felt that the ‘consent’ procedure operating at our hospital should be reviewed. We were unsure of the practices in other areas, apart from Lothian Area where we knew new ‘consent’ forms had been devised, and felt that a good starting point would be to contact mental handicap hospitals in Scotland to gather information regarding the present ‘consent’ practices overall.

Type
Original articles
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1992

References

Gunn, M. (1987) Consent to treatment and people with mental handicaps. Mental Handicap, 15, 169171.Google Scholar
Mason, J. K. & McCall Smith, R. A. (1987) Law and Medical Ethics. London: Butterworths.Google Scholar
Ward, A. D. (1990) Medical Consent in The Power to Act: The Development of Scots Law for Mentally Handicapped People. Scottish Society for the Mentally Handicapped.Google Scholar
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