Patient Rights and Patient Chronicity

Abstract

Uncritical efforts to extend and promote rights for the mentally ill may ameliorate the degree of chronicity for some patients, but can also contribute to chronicity for others. A positive definition of chronicity emphasizes the need for psychiatric services to attain maximum possible independence from the consequences of illness. Three categories of rights–-autonomy, equality and entitlements–-each contribute to chronicity for some patients. Successful programs for chronic patients display assertive, innovative and pragmatic characteristics that, in effect, incorporate the advocacy of “rights” into the armamentarium of humanistic medicine. Medicine–-not the judiciary–-is better able to act on these discoveries for the benefit of the patients.