Submitted by: Submitted by rbmatthewrb
Views: 539
Words: 1275
Pages: 6
Category: Societal Issues
Date Submitted: 03/05/2011 05:50 AM
Critically evaluate the legal and ethical appropriateness of admitting a patient
to hospital under the amended Mental Health Act 1983 Where the patient exhibits paraphilic behaviour.
What is paraphilic behaviour?
Introduction – what is my stance? What are the main academic & legal commentaries I will be using throughout the essay? How do these affect the legal and ethical appropriateness?
Is the presence of a paraphilia indicative to a mental illness?
Outline the treatability thesis and examine varying views on whether paraphiliacs are in fact treatable. Examine what treatments are available/ success rates of treatments offered to paraphiliacs.
Provide examples of cases that were both for and against paraphiliacs being treatable.
Outline academic arguments for and against sex offenders being treatable.
Examine whether a paraphiliac should be hospitalized regardless of treatability outcome? Can protection of the public and beneficial day to day nursing be enough to fit the requirement?
Examine the ethical appropriateness of detaining a paraphiliac when this may lead to indefinite detention.
Examine alternative treatment settings.
3) Identified on the basis of sexual behavior
sufficiently aberrant and aggressive
to bring the perpetrator to
the attention of law enforcement officials,
sex offenders as a group include
a variety of types of individuals. Although
it has been suggested that the
vast majority of rapists have no mental
disorder other than antisocial personality
disorder (3), many offenders
meet diagnostic criteria for paraphilias,
especially pedophilia, and may
also suffer from comorbid anxiety, depressive,
or psychotic disorders.
4) Regarding treatment, a body of literature
has evolved steadily over the
past two decades that addresses the
effectiveness of treatment programs
for sex offenders, but it remains specialized
and unfamiliar to many general
psychiatrists (4–7). It is commonly...