Health Law and Policy Commons^™

Psychiatric Restraint And Seclusion: Resisting Legislative Solution, Stacey A. Tovino

Faculty Articles

The use of restraint and seclusion in the American psychiatric setting has a rich history - rich in medical, ethical, legal, and social controversy. For centuries, mental health care providers used movement restrictions and solitary confinement to manage psychiatric patients. Superintendents of eighteenth and early nineteenth century insane asylums and other institutions of confinement believed that strait-waistcoats, "tranquilizer chairs," "maniac beds," chains, shackles, and "quiet rooms" deescalated agitation and promoted self-control. Reforms beginning in the nineteenth century helped make some psychiatric institutions more humane, in part because staff members were trained to find ways to calm potentially violent patients without …

Something Must Be Done: An Argument For The Partial Deregulation Of Research On Bipolar Disorder And The Implementation Of Rolling Informed Consent, Janalee S. Kraschnewski

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Bipolar disorder (BD) cripples the lives of countless individuals across the globe. The healthcare community has had difficulty securing effective, long-term treatment for this disease. This Note argues that enlarging the pool of possible research subjects through partial deregulation of BD research would facilitate the development of better treatment. This Note further proposes the implementation of a system of rolling informed consent to ensure that actual and full consent is obtained from BD research subjects.

Benumbed, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

I originally intended to write a column on tort liability and research ethics, and I still plan to do so. But this column is a cri de coeur as I finish another semester teaching law and bioethics. This year, I asked with growing frequency, urgency, and exasperation, "Must law's reverence for autonomy squeeze out the impulse to kindness? Where is the beneficence in bioethics?" These questions assail me every term. Why? Consider Steele v. Hamilton County Community Mental Health Board. Mr. Steele was involuntarily "hospitalized after his family reported that he was 'seeing things and trying to fight imaginary …

The Impact Of 9/11 And Its Aftermath On Substance Use And Psychological Functioning: An Overview, Patrick B. Johnson, Linda Richter

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Essay provides a brief summary and evaluation of findings on the mental health and substance abuse consequences of the events of 9/11 throughout the nation and in United States' cities. It also presents new data obtained from clients who entered substance abuse treatment in New York and other cities either before 9/11 or during a six-month period following the events. This Essay discusses how best to interpret these varying research findings. It concludes that crisis produces many responses and most people just coped with 9/11 in their individual ways.

Looking Backward: The Twentieth Century Revolutions In Psychiatry, Law And Public Mental Health, Sheldon Gelman

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Do histories of psychiatry make a difference--or have legal implications--in the present? Does our current situation help explain what historians say about psychiatry's past? Focusing on the past half century--the era of medications-- this paper explores the reciprocal relationship between the present and the past in psychiatry. Part II sketches the medical developments that constitute the subjects of any history of psychiatry. This Part also examines related developments in law. Part III introduces some problems of psychiatric historiography and examines some historians' attempts to deal with them. Part IV analyzes the account of psychiatry's past contained in Edward Shorter's well-regarded …

Legislative And Judicial Solutions For Mental Health Parity: S. 543, Reasonable Accommodation, And An Individualized Remedy Under Title I Of The Ada, Keith Nelson

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Doubts About Daubert: Psychiatric Anecdata As A Case Study, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., the Supreme Court sensibly held that testimony purporting to be scientific is admissible only if it possesses sufficient indicia of scientific validity. In Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, the Court more questionably held that opinion evidence based on "technical" and "specialized" knowledge must meet the same admissibility threshold as scientific testimony. This Article addresses the implications of these two decisions for opinion evidence presented by mental health professionals in criminal trials.

Advocacy Of The Establishment Of Mental Health Specialty Courts In The Provision Of Therapeutic Justice For Mentally Ill Offenders, Leroy L. Kondo

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores the establishment of mental health courts as a partial solution to the perplexing societal problem that relegates mentally ill offenders to a "revolving door" existence in and out of prisons and jails.This inescapable situation results from a paucity ofeffective humanitarian policies, laws, and procedures for treating such medically disordered defendants. The establishment of mental health specialty courts is investigated as a potential means of addressing the complex legal issues and psycho-sociological problems faced by the judicial system in dealing with mentally ill offenders.

Calling Dr. Love: The Physician-Patient Sexual Relationship As Grounds For Medical Malpractice - Society Pays While The Doctor And Patient Play, Scott M. Puglise

Journal of Law and Health

This note examines "consensual" sexual relationships between non-mental health physicians and patients. More specifically, it examines whether such relationships ever amount to medical malpractice. Generally, a non-mental health physician would be liable under the rubric of medical malpractice only if the sexual relationship was commenced under the guise of "medical treatment." Recent cases, however, have expanded liability in certain circumstances when the physician-patient relationship has involved "counseling matters." "Counseling matters" describes talking to patients about their feelings, or discussing personal problems not necessarily related to their proposed treatment. Medical treatment supplemented by "counseling" purportedly requires greater scrutiny due to the …

Ex Parte Civil Commitment, Family Care-Givers, And Schizophrenia: A Therapeutic Jurisprudence Analysis, Éva Szeli

Seattle University Law Review

First, this Article will discuss schizophrenia and its impact on these individuals and their families. Family variables in the course of the disorder will be highlighted. Then, this Article will review the legal power afforded such families by ex parte provisions in civil commitment statutes using the involuntary examination portion of the Florida mental health code as a model. Finally, this Article will assess this system of civil commitment available to care-giving families in therapeutic jurisprudential terms, with recommendations for maximizing the therapeutic consequences and minimizing the antitherapeutic consequences of ex parte procedures.

The Authority Of A Guardian To Commit An Adult Ward, David M. English

Faculty Publications

Placement in a mental health facility may be made through either a voluntary or involuntary commitment. Involuntary commitment usually requires a number of protective safeguards, including a court hearing, the appointment of counsel, and the meeting of a statutory criterion such as danger to self or others. Voluntary commitment is much more informal, with a written application and clinical assessment being all that is normally required. Most voluntary commitments are made upon application.of a patient who has the ability to give informed consent. But in a substantial number of states an individual also may be committed by his or her …

Outpatient Civil Commitment In North Carolina: Constitutional And Policy Concerns, Erika Lietzan

Faculty Publications

This article examines preventive outpatient commitment, which targets those not ill or dangerous enough to be committed to inpatient facilities under state commitment laws. After discussing the history and design of the NC scheme, it explores constitutional and practical difficulties. Ultimately, it argues that individualized case management through local mental health clinics is the more effective and humane way of serving the interests of both the individual and the state.

Mdri: Pioneering Strategies For International Enforcement Of Mental Disability Rights, Max Lapertosa, Eric Rosenthal

Human Rights Brief

No abstract provided.

Children's Competence To Provide Informed Consent For Mental Health Treatment, Richard E. Redding

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

To Stay At Home: Analysis Of Rights And Recommendations On Procedures For Persons Receiving Mental Health Services In The Community , Janet L. Lowder, Franklin J. Hickman

Journal of Law and Health

Before the pendulum swings back to the use of institutions as the primary treatment modality for persons with severe mental illness, there should be a re-examination of the alternatives available to community care providers to ensure compliance with treatment outside of the hospital. This article will focus on the alternatives available in the Ohio mental health system, which is fundamentally oriented towards community-based treatment, and the effects of this orientation.

Decoding Right To Refuse Treatment Law, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Caring For The Nation--Current Issues In Health Care Reform, Susan E. Powley

Vanderbilt Law Review

Health care reform is once again on the "front burner" of American politics. With health care costs in the United States rising at three times the rate of inflation and an increasing portion of the population falling through the cracks of the current health care delivery system,' legislators, health care professionals, and the population at large now have little difficulty agreeing that the system is badly in need of reform. This consensus, however, falls apart when discussion turns to what needs to be fixed and how to fix it. Federal legislators currently have over twenty health bills pending before them, …

Justice, Mental Health, And Therapeutic Jurisprudence, David B. Wexler

Cleveland State Law Review

Mental health law advocates and even scholars have typically been hostile toward, afraid of, or at best indifferent to, the mental health disciplines (mainly psychiatry and psychology) and their practitioners. Learning to be skeptical of supposed scientific expertise is an important lesson, and the law should never simply defer to psychiatry and the related disciplines. But to the extent that the legal system now ignores developments in the mental health disciplines, the lesson of healthy skepticism has been overlearned. It is my thesis, then, that those of us interested in 'justice" in mental health law ought not to adopt the …

The Justice Mission And Mental Health Law, Steven R. Smith

Cleveland State Law Review

Mental health law's concern with justice, so much a part of the discussion of civil commitment, the insanity defense and other traditional mental health subjects, has been a neglected subject in one important area. Malpractice claims against mental health professionals commonly are slow, expensive and embarrassing for the professional and the injured. Processing these claims creates great stress on plaintiffs and defendants alike. The legal system has been insensitive to the harm it inflicts on mental health patients who pursue malpractice claims. Too often even patients' lawyers have also ignored the potential for harm. Because the current system conflicts with …

Rights Within The Therapeutic Relationship, Patricia King

Journal of Law and Health

My thesis is that the failure of these rights to be implemented in any meaningful way for persons with mental illness is the result of a narrow image of rights which emphasizes the individual, valuing autonomy independent of care, and sacrifices relationship and the connection to the community. By conceiving of rights in such a way, we strengthen the individual but do not address the reality of the context or relationship within which persons with mental illness will actualize these rights. This failure to recognize and account for the disequilibrium within therapeutic relationships and the necessity of caring within such …

Mental Health Care For Children: Before And During State Custody, The Honorable K. Edward Greene

Campbell Law Review

This Article...suggests the need to attend more carefully to the care of children after they are removed from their homes. Specifically, it will address the state's obligation to provide mental health care to children in the home and to those removed from the home and in state custody.

The Freedom To Be Psychotic, Joram Graf Haber

Journal of Law and Health

The following will examine both involuntary commitment and deinstitutionalization, as well as some recent and rather novel proposals that have been championed by those who advocate neither. I refer here to the so called "Ulysses Contract" as well as to "mandatory out-patient treatment." My concern is primarily with the moral and legal aspects of these practices and to that end will focus on more conceptual matters. I will conclude by defending a concept of freedom which does greater justice to patients' needs than does the one currently employed.

Ten Years After: Evolving Mental Health Advocacy And Judicial Trends, Michael L. Perlin

Fordham Urban Law Journal

"Address to the Mental Health Legal Advocacy Symposium, "Current Issues in Law and Psychiatry," New York, New York, May 30, 1985." This speech provides an overview of trends in mental disability law as they evolved from 1972 to 1982. It also explores social, economic, and political developments impacting on mental health advocacy, and looks at both seminal supreme court cases and lower courts' responses. It finds an ambivalent Supreme Court without a clear position on many issues related to mentally disabled individuals.

Foreword: Public Health & The Law—A Symposium Dedicated To Professor William J. Curran, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay serves as the foreword to Public Health & the Law, a symposium dedicated to Professor William J. Curran held in 1987.

During his career, Professor Curran chaired the Harvard School of Public Health Committee on Human Research; he directed the Program in Law and Public Health; and he was co-director of the Harvard Interfaculty Program in Medical Ethics from 1973 to 1980. He was also an advisor to the World Health Organization and spent two sabbatical periods in Europe with WHO organizations. He advised and lectured in countries throughout the world.

At Harvard Law School and at …

Review Of The Reign Of Error: Psychiatry, Authority, And Law, Linda C. Fentiman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Theory And Practice Of Civil Commitment, Andrew Scull

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Court of Last Resort: Mental Illness and the Law by Carol A.B. Warren, contributions by Stephen J. Morse and Jack Zusman

The Insanity Plea: The Uses And Abuses Of The Insanity Defense, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Insanity Plea: The Uses and Abuses of the Insanity Defense by William J. Winslade and Judith Wilson Ross

Equality, "Anisonomy," And Justice: A Review Of Madness And The Criminal Law, Andrew Von Hirsch

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Madness and the Criminal Law by Norval Morris

The Propriety Of Denying Entry To Homosexual Aliens: Examining The Public Health Service's Authority Over Medical Exclusions, Robert Poznanski

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note defends the position that the PHS has the authority to define homosexuality for the purpose of the section 212(a)(4) exclusion, and that the PHS definition is binding upon the INS. Therefore, the PHS's decision to refuse to examine aliens for homosexuality precludes the INS from excluding aliens on that basis. Part I of this Note traces the history of the policy of excluding homosexual aliens. Part II maintains that, regardless of the psychiatric profession's interpretation of ''psychopathic personality,'' Congress intended the expression to encompass homosexuality. Part III contends that Congress intended to empower the PHS to change its …

Mental Health Law: Major Issues, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Mental Health Law: Major Issues by David B. Wexler