“How can we be sure that someone lacks ‘decision-making capacity’?”, writes Tania Gergel in Psyche magazine.
Psyche is a digital magazine from Aeon that illuminates the human condition through psychology, philosophy and the arts.
“…[I]t is during these severe episodes [of bipolar], just when treatment is most needed, that there is often a reluctance to engage with it. For those who see this coming and who wish to exert control over their future unwell self, there might be a way to do so: a set of instructions, drawn up by the individual when well, which has come to be known as a ‘self-binding directive’, ‘precommitment’, or a ‘Ulysses clause’.”