Mental capacity of psychiatric patients

Nearly every society maintains legal norms that define those members of society qualified to participate in social affairs. Mental capacity and legal competence are deemed necessary conditions for legal actions to have legal validity. On Nov. 23, 2009, newly revised adult guardianship provisions came into effect in Taiwan. However, there has been lack of discussion with regard to how assessments of mental capacity and legal competence should be conducted on psychiatric patients. This paper reviewed relevant overseas literature on this subject and followed common practice in separating legal mental capacity into causal and functional components. The causal component predicates the diseases and illnesses that render the disability, while the functional component represents legally substantial impairments in terms of cognition, emotion and behavior. The paper explored functional component contents, including finance management, individual health care, independence in daily life, interpersonal relationships and communing. Findings pointed out that in setting up competence standards, a trade-off between respect for autonomy and beneficence is unavoidable. As Taiwan does not have rich empirical data on competence assessments and decisions, collaboration between the legal and psychiatric professions is recommended to engage in relevant research to enhance legal consistencies and the science of competence assessment.