Doctors in all provinces should be able to admit person to prevent physical or mental deterioration of the patient, a medical ethician told a psychiatric conference in Vancouver on Friday.
At the Canadian Psychiatric Association annual meeting, more than 1,200 delegates ar meeting to discuss fresh research on psychiatric clinical practice and patient care.
Mental health acts in each province and territory differ, said Prof. Alister Browne, ethics stem director at the University of British Columbia's module of medicine.
B.C.'s Mental Health Act has what Browne calls a "broad criteria" that he said should be emulated in other provinces.
"The wide criteria I think is something that rational multitude would want, generally, because it's departure to ready sure that you're non mentally broken and untreated," Browne aforementioned in an interview.
Adult patients deemed competent should besides have the right to refuse treatment, as is the case under the mental wellness act in Ontario and some other provinces.
"If you acknowledge the treatment may do some good, just you do not think the medications that they have in their arsenal to help you are going to do the trick, then it seems to me that you can weigh the pros and the cons, and make a decision as to whether you'd wish to have treatment," said Browne.
A patient's family should be the ones to authorize treatment to help protect the privacy of people wHO need avail, added Browne.
During the league, the Canadian Psychiatric Association is launch a political campaign to press psychiatrists to become part of the solution in the fight against the stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness. The conference runs through Sept. 7.
Last month, a report card presented at Canadian Medical Association's meeting shone a harsh and unflattering calorie-free on the attitudes Canadians have to mental health.
Michael Kirby, chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada exhorted Canada's doctors to show their committal to tackling myths and stereotypes well-nigh mental sickness head on.
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