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Consent to medical treatment and people with learning disability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Jenny Curran  and
Sheila Hollins
Jenny Curran*
Affiliation:
Psychiatry of Learning Disability
Sheila Hollins
Affiliation:
Division of Psychiatry of Disability, St George's Hospital Medical School, Jenner Wing, Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 0RE
*
∗Correspondence
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For those people who have the cognitive and social impairments described as a learning disability, personal choice is more often than not a limited experience, (Mencap, 1989). Simple choices may be usurped by the preferences of carers, and more serious decisions may be correctly or incorrectly deemed beyond their capacity. We will address two questions which repeatedly face clinicians working with adults with learning disabilities. First, how do we ascertain a person's level of competence to give consent in relation to medical treatment? Second, in the case where a person with learning disability is considered unable to give informed consent to treatment, how do we proceed to make a decision regarding treatment?

Type
Briefings
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 18 , Issue 11 , November 1994 , pp. 691 - 693
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, 1994

References

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