Ethical Considerations of Informed Consent in Psychiatric Mental Health Practices

Ethical Considerations of Informed Consent in Psychiatric Mental Health Practices

An adult patient needs urgent psychotherapy for better treatment outcomes. A PMHNP aims to start the treatment procedure. The psychiatric nurse practitioner offers him the legal right of consent. The patient learns about the treatment plan and considers it ineffective. In this context, the PMHNP faces ethical and moral dilemmas (Blease, et al., 2020). The practitioner considers the treatment the best for the patient, but due to compromised decision-making abilities, the patient makes it difficult to implement the treatment plan. If the practitioner does not inform about the psychiatric treatment's complete details, this practice will go against the ethical consideration of informed consent. In the case of children/adolescents, the parents and guardians decide treatment interventions for psychotherapy. The parents do not allow the children /adolescents to know about the treatment intervention by the PMHNP. The parents and guardians often do not respect the ideas and consent of children and adolescents. The parents make the decisions according to their perspective. This scenario poses ethical dilemmas for the PMHNP to ensure the ethical considerations of informed consent (Lamont et al., 2019). According to the ethical considerations, it is unethical to make the uninformed decision for treatment interventions in psychotherapies of children and adolescents.