Psychiatrists may be among the clinicians to encounter a depressed and suicidal patient who wishes to discontinue life-sustaining treatment. A patient who is suffering from a condition such as dysarthria makes decision-making capacity (a physician’s determination of a patient’s ability to medically consent) increasingly difficult to assess. The clinician must balance ethical principles of autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice in order to achieve a plan of care that is in the patient’s best interest.
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