jsgoddess:
quote:
My question is, do you agree with such laws [supporting emergency use of psych drugs]. You said you'd rather be dead than drugged, so then I'd assume you don't agree with my coworker's father being drugged?
If your coworker's father had a health care proxy or an advance directive or a living will or something of that sort that stated that he (now) does not want pysch drugs administered to him (in the future) in the event that he becomes incapable of making that decision, they should honor that if they have other means of preventing him from yanking out his IVs &etc., such as tying his arms down, and if there are not substantial overriding reasons why those alternatives are not realistic options (e.g., in order to prevent him from yanking out the IVs they find they have to tie him down so tightly that his circulation is impaired).
Mostly I support the law -- although I think it is abused a lot in psychiatric hospitals and nursing homes (where "emergency" too often consists of "is refusing to take the meds voluntarily" or "is telling the nurse to go away and leave her alone after the 14th time that the nurse tried to get her to take the meds voluntarily"), I'm under the impression that this is pretty rare in a regular medical-surgical floor or private medical office type of setting.
What I said was that I would rather be dead than drugged on a neverending
permanent basis. I would not say that I prefer death to being drugged on
an emergency basis, as I would live to see another undrugged day after the
situation had been sorted out.
See my previous post on this same thread
Original SDMB thread Is manic-depression a disease to be cured?