Reference no: EM133610138
Case Study: Scott Starson is a self-taught physicist with a long history of mental illness. Since 1985, he has been in and out of psychiatric facilities and is diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a disease characterized by distortions of reality and elevated or depressed mood. In 1998, when he was 42 years old, he was arrested for threatening to kill fellow residents of a Toronto townhouse and a police officer. When a court found him not responsible for his actions due to mental illness, he was transferred to a psychiatric hospital where he adamantly refused antipsychotic medication prescribed by his physicians.Mr. Starson, who insists on being called "Professor Starson," has no formal training in physics, but has published several papers with Pierre Noyes, a physics professor at Stanford University. He disagrees with the diagnosis made by his psychiatrists. Furthermore, having taken antipsychotic medication in the past, he believes that it slows his mental abilities and hinders his ability to do creative work in physics. He describes his work in physics as the most important source of meaning in his life. Being deprived of the ability to continue his work would, in his words, "be like death."His treating physicians believe that his condition is deteriorating. They point to the fact that he has been unable to publish since the mid-1980s, in their view, due to his illness. They also point to a variety of delusional beliefs held by the patient, including that he continues to work from his hospital room with an international network of scientists, even though his room has no phone or computer. Antipsychotic medication, they believe, represents his best chance for recovery. Due to his aggressive and threatening behaviour when untreated, he is unlikely to be released from the psychiatric hospital without treatment with medication.
Questions:
- Would Freedman deem Scott Starson competent to refuse psychiatric medication? Why?
- Why does Misak believe that patients in the intensive care unit should not be presumed competent? Would she say that patients, like Scott Starson, who are in psychiatric hospitals should also not be presumed competent? Why?