That is totally correct! I worry about this myself.

Why would you bother, this is insanity to say you are giving someone rights and then to say oh, these rights are useless when you need them. Another disgusting example of stigmatizing attitudes of our politicians and society in general.

Well, I don't know that it is meant to be stigmatizing. If anything, we should be angry with the insurance companies. Hospital stays are usually based on someone's insurance more than anything else. It is very disappointing that hospital ERs are not allowed to refuse care to people in medical emergencies, but can transfer people in psychiatric emergencies elsewhere, even when they have appropriate staff to deal with them. I do think it is a concern that facility preference is part of PADs when often this is out of control of everyone except the insurance company. Perhaps we could use a PAD to bring suit against the insurance companies for discrimination?

False sense of hope is exactly right, there is no way docs are going to give up their power. PADs are vacuous means for propoganda for state mental health systems to pay lip service to providing 'person-centered' services for someone with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. This website and blog should be more honest about it's intentions.

I just stumbled upon this site. I am wondering how these advanced directives might be useful in serving those who are diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. Through my own personal experience, advance directives are not particularly powerful when it comes to execution in the moment they were designed for, and so I don't think it is any particular weakness or stigmatization just for the mental illness. My grandmother had Advanced Directives for her own health care in the ever popular form of a Living Will. But when the time came, it was not honored, and after 4 years we are finally able to be assured that there will be no interventions as she had originally requested. Her case was complicated because of incapacitation due to dementia. I think that the development of the PAD might assist our legal system in dealing with cases which involve incapacitation in the courts because it would refer the cases back to the professionals most suited to make qualified recommendations, the doctors who have studied the various forms of mental illness. As it stands today, far too many individuals are being put through legal process where attorneys decide the case based on their own prejudice and lack of any real education on mental health issues and competency. As for it fully protecting individual choice, this is something that our Living Wills do not even do yet, as we are working against a medical establishment that plays GOD and abhors the thought of letting a life go by natural causes at the request of the individual. This PAD might have better success since it is not dealing with the issue of death, but quality of life and protection for the one who is in need of it.

I have asked Duke many times to assist me in completing a PAD or advance directive and they tell me to get an attorney to help me, even though I want the PAD for Duke hospital since they have a thing with forcing mental patients into therapy by arresting them if they get sick in their hospital. Why is this if Duke is the National Resource Center on PADs. I have not even been directed to this site when I have asked Duke Medicine for assistance in creating a PAD or Advance Directive that will work in their medical facilities. What's up with that???????