{"id":2155,"date":"2008-12-17T21:34:42","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T21:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2155"},"modified":"2008-12-17T21:34:42","modified_gmt":"2008-12-17T21:34:42","slug":"decision_by_pro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2155","title":{"rendered":"Decision By Proxy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every week, Ray, a 54-year-old man, is taken to a local clinic for electro-convulsive therapy. But Ray finds these treatments frightening and a direct cause of significant memory loss. He wants the treatments to stop, but <a href=\"http:\/\/minnesota.publicradio.org\/display\/web\/2008\/12\/15\/forced_electroconvulsive_therapy\/\">he&#8217;ll need a court order for that to happen<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>For most people, the right to refuse medical treatment isn&#8217;t a matter up for debate. But for people with mental illness, the same standards don&#8217;t always apply. We tend to assume that a person who is experiencing debilitating depression or hearing voices isn&#8217;t capable of making decisions about their medical treatment. In some cases, there may be legitimate arguments to make regarding a person&#8217;s competence, but it&#8217;s worth questioning whether stigma influences a judge&#8217;s decision to compel treatment. I don&#8217;t pretend to have a full understanding of the role mental illness plays in affecting one&#8217;s decision-making capabilities, but I do think it&#8217;s possible for a person to make a rational decision between coping with one&#8217;s symptoms and the dramatic side-effects of a treatment. <\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Bridget for the tip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every week, Ray, a 54-year-old man, is taken to a local clinic for electro-convulsive therapy. But Ray finds these treatments frightening and a direct cause of significant memory loss. He wants the treatments to stop, but he&#8217;ll need a court order for that to happen. For most people, the right to refuse medical treatment isn&#8217;t <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2155' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-yL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}