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The SUNY psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who is well known for harsh criticisms of his own profession (psychiatry), published a paper in the December 20, 2003 issue of BMJ in which he proposed the creation of legally enforceable psychiatric protection orders to prevent involuntary institutionalization and medical treatment on psychiatric patients. The legal remedy Dr. Szasz is proposing is designed to empower patients to make their own decisions regarding psychiatric care in advance of any major psychiatric episodes in a legally enforceable form so that they will not be institutionalized, medicated, or otherwise treated medically against their will.
In the same paper, Szasz also points out that family members of psychiatric patients are often the ones who not only endorse but also actively demand and lobby for (via the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) coercive or abusive psychiatric assault on their family members, usually their (adult) children, under the guise of caring for them. Thus, the current practice of having close relatives make medical decisions on behalf of their mentally ill family member often does not serve the best interest of the patient.
On the surface, Szasz's argument for the legally enforceable "psychiatric will" may not appear to relate to the intersex controversy because he is mainly addressing the needs of adult and competent psychiatric patients. But any reform that enhances the patient's right to make their own medical decisions (rather than having someone else making them for the patient) is an improvement over the current medical paradigm, and will likely impact the controversy over cosmetic surgeries performed on intersex children without their own consent.
There is a detailed analysis of Szasz's paper on Ragged Edge Online, the website for disability rights movement.
Source:
Szasz T (2003). "The psychiatric protection order for the 'battered mental patient.'" BMJ 327:1449-1451.
Posted by Emi on Jan 26, 2004