Bringing forward my post from a previous thread:
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There is a difference between “capacity” and “competency” and they are often used interchangeably, when they are in fact different (guilty myself).
- Competency (sometimes called legal capacity)
- A judicial determination of legal status
- Made by a JUDGE, not a physician
- Denotes a person’s legal ability or inability
- Multiple areas of competency may be addressed in legal settings, such as competency to:
- Stand trial
- Be executed
- Be a parent
- Make a will
- Sign a contract
- Make health care decisions
- Judges make final decisions about competency, sometimes after input from psychiatrists and psychologists, or other physicians.
- Court opinions about competency should generally be left to psychiatrists with specific training in forensic psychiatry, except for competency to make health care decisions.
- Capacity (sometimes called clinical competency)
- Assessed by a PHYSICIAN, not a judge
- A clinical opinion regarding a patient’s decisional abilities to make health care decisions
- Assessment based primarily on the patient’s capacity to understand an informed consent discussion
- Elements of informed consent
- Knowing
- What the procedure is
- Risks
- Benefits
- Alternatives
- Voluntary
- Competent
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Given this difference,
IF she were to already be back at the jail, perhaps the psychiatric facility deemed she had
capacity (and maybe she declined services?? JMO) and therefore it is back in a judges hands to rule on the
competency issue??
I sat through a few hearings for patients at a psychiatric facility I worked at a while back. These were for people who had been involuntarily committed to the facility for extended periods of time (like 60 or 90 day periods, not just the 72hr holds). The patient had the opportunity to argue why they felt they should be released and then usually the primary member of the treatment team would argue why the patient should stay or if they agreed they didn’t need to be there. The vast majority sided with the Psychiatrist.