Psychiatric Advance Directives in New York: Where Honoring (or Overriding) Stated Preferences Becomes a Liability Question

Stephan M. Carlson, MD, MBA, FAPA · Psychiatric Malpractice

A patient writes down, while well, exactly how she wants to be treated in a future crisis. The crisis arrives, and a clinician departs from those instructions—or follows them past the point of safety. New York gives surprisingly little dedicated statutory scaffolding for that moment, and the resulting ambiguity is where the malpractice question lives. The New York gap that frames the whole dispute Many states have enacted standalone psychiatric advance directive statutes that let a person specify, in advance, consent to or refusal of particular medications, hospitalization, and electroconvulsive therapy. New York has not. A New Yorker who wants to bind future mental health treatment must ins

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