When the mind fails : a guide to dealing with incompetency / Michel Silberfeld, Arthur Fish.

Print version record.

Incompetency is loss of the ability to make, and act on, your own decisions and with the aging of North America's population, it is increasingly widespread. It can happen to anyone and many people want to plan for its possibility in order to ensure their own care and protection. Incompetency can cause great, but often avoidable, suffering and emotional anguish to those afflicted by it, as well as the relatives and friends who care for them. People in health care, financial services, and law must deal with clients whose competency in some, or all, matters can be questioned. Addressing the needs of incompetent people, or planning for its possibility, requires knowledge about what incompetency is, how to recognize and react to it, and what kinds of professional advice to seek. This book is a practical, focused guide to thinking about incompetency, as useful to the layman as to those who perform, or refer clients to, competency assessments. Addressing the needs of incompetent people, or planning for its possibility, requires knowledge about what incompetency is, how to recognize and react to it, and what kinds of professional advice to seek. This book is a practical, focused guide to thinking about incompetency, as useful to the layman as to those who perform, or refer clients to, competency assessments. Michel Silberfeld, a doctor, and Arthur Fish, a lawyer, draw on their experience at a competency clinic, citing fictional but realistic case studies and offering many concrete examples. The clinic is multidisciplinary and founded on the principle that competency is not simply a medical or legal concept, but rather a complex phenomenon that has medical, social, legal, and ethical dimensions. Silberfeld and Fish follow the same principle in the advice they offer. There are fundamental problems associated with incompetency and many similarities among the laws and social policies that apply to incompetent people in North America. This book is not a substitute for qualified professional help but it is a practical guide to thinking about incompetency, based on the premise that the best source of personal empowerment is knowledge and understanding.

""Contents""; ""Preface""; ""Introduction""; ""1 What is incompetency?""; ""Choosing one's residence""; ""Making a will""; ""Financial decisions""; ""Health-care decisions""; ""Powers of attorney""; ""Instructing a lawyer""; ""2 Incompetency as a human problem""; ""Dealing with incompetent people""; ""Why care? ""; ""Basic concepts""; ""3 Assessing competency""; ""Ability to make a choice""; ""Task-specific competency""; ""Assessing the whole individual""; ""Caution in challenging competence""; ""Medical treatment and assessment""; ""4 Informal competency assessment""; ""Questions to ask""

""Assessing risk""""Summary""; ""Three informal assessments""; ""An outline of informal competency assessment""; ""5 Formal competency assessment""; ""Basic concepts""; ""The formal assessment process""; ""Fairness""; ""Three competency assessments""; ""Common errors in competency assessment""; ""6 Guardianship and other imposed care""; ""Guardianship""; ""Alternatives to guardianship""; ""An example of guardianship""; ""Summary""; ""7 Planning for incompetency""; ""Planning for financial incompetency""; ""Wills""; ""Powers of attorney""; ""Advance directives: living wills""

""General concerns in planning for substitute decision making""""Assessing competency to perform legal acts: three examples""; ""Guidelines for designing plans for substitute decision making""; ""Conclusion""; ""Index""; ""A""; ""B""; ""C""; ""D""; ""E""; ""F""; ""G""; ""H""; ""I""; ""J""; ""L""; ""M""; ""N""; ""O""; ""P""; ""R""; ""S""; ""T""; ""U""; ""V""; ""W""

English.

eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - Worldwide