Núcleo Disca

Disability and citizenship

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  1. Informed Consent and Support for Decision-Making: A Critical Review of Legal Reforms in Latin America

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    Persons with intellectual and cognitive disabilities (hereinafter PICDs) face significant barriers when accessing health treatment and satisfying their right to enjoy the highest possible standard of health . This is worrying to the extent that these persons also experience a greater need for such treatments and have higher mortality and morbidity rates than the rest of the population. These difficulties impact access to health promotion policies and curative health treatments, and include, for example, inadequate time allocation by health care workers, discrimination, lack of reasonable adjustments or poor accessibility to premises and health systems. These barriers also affect the ability to select health care treatment and to control how it is provided. The latter affects PICDs in a particularly acute way due to a diversity of factors, which include, on the one hand, barriers associated with their impairments, such as those that affect communication, perception or memory, and, on the other hand, barriers socially constructed in their environment, which include, among others, paternalistic attitudes, lack of support from their caregivers and lack of expertise and training of health care workers, which often leads to discrimination and mistreatment.

    To the extent that historically, PICDs have been subjected to regimes of legal incapacity where they are appointed a representative to make decisions for them on property and personal matters – as is the case with interdiction and guardianship in Latin America –, health legislation has relied on these institutions to determine who should make decisions regarding their health treatment. with the emergence of the debate on the need to provide informed consent (hereinafter IC) in the second half of the 20Thcentury, which reconstructs the doctor-patient relationship in terms of individual autonomy, the question has arisen about how PICDs can authorise health treatment. The default legal response, to the extent that IC appears as a personal legal act, is that if the person is under a regime of legal incapacity, the person who must provide IC as a substitute is their legal representative.

     

    Notes:

    • This publication is a chapter from the book “Legal Capacity, Disability and Human Rights”
    • This book is not free to access.
    • This book was published in English.

  2. Argentina, Chile, Columbia and Peru: Mental Health Law and Legal Capacity

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    Routledge Handbook of Mental Health Law
    Edited By Brendan D. Kelly, Mary Donnelly

    Mental health law is a rapidly evolving area of practice and research, with growing global dimensions. This work reflects the increasing importance of this field, critically discussing key issues of controversy and debate, and providing up-to-date analysis of cutting-edge developments in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Australia.

    This is a timely moment for this book to appear. The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) sought to transform the landscape in which mental health law is developed and implemented. This Convention, along with other developments, has, to varying degrees, informed sweeping legislative reforms in many countries around the world. These and other developments are discussed here. Contributors come from a wide range of countries and a variety of academic backgrounds including ethics, law, philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology. Some contributions are also informed by lived experience, whether in person or as family members. The result is a rich, polyphonic, and sometimes discordant account of what mental health law is and what it might be.

    The Handbook is aimed at mental health scholars and practitioners as well as students of law, human rights, disability studies, and psychiatry, and campaigners and law- and policy-makers.

    Within this publication, the chapter “Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru: Mental Health Law and Legal Capacity” by Pablo Marshall is included.

     

    Notes:

    • This publication is a book chapter and is not free to access. Is only available for purchase through Routledge.
    • This chapter was published in English.