Lacking Insight - Community Law

Lacking InsightIn addition to this, the role of the psychiatrist memberis held to be one of great value if the psychiatrist isproperly fulfilling that role.It’s often the psychiatrist who enables the moreeffective challenging of the psychiatric authority.As long as they’re playing that role properly andindependently it’s really good, because oftenenough I’ll be saying, ‘Oh look I just don’t likethe look of that, it’s not making sense to me’and if the psychiatrist comes in and says ‘wellthere’s good reason for that, it’s rubbish’, it’s veryfortifying. On other occasions the psychiatrist willinformedly say ‘Look, you might think that, butthis is a really common sort of presentation in thiskind of situation’.Board Member (Legal)A pre-determined decision?In response to concern that it is the contents of theindividual’s medical file that determines the outcomeof the hearing, Board members suggest that whilstthis piece of information is indeed important, otherinformation plays a greater part in their determination.So the main evidence is the report and the file andother evidence is even more important, what thepeople have to say, especially the patient and anyonewho is with the patient, like the patient’s advocate.Board Member (Community)Of course, this in itself raises a number of issues thatwill be dealt with later, namely whether consumersare presented with an appropriate opportunity tospeak at hearings, as well as the rate of advocacybefore the Board.Access to InformationFrom the stakeholder perspective, the issue ofaccess to information can be improved by providingconsumers with more time to read their file andproviding assistance before they do so.Time needed for a consumer toread the fileThe President of the Board told the researchersthat access granted to a person’s file ought to bedetermined on a case-by-case basis, and that someindividuals would benefit from having more time toprepare. He expressed the view that access mayneed to be restricted for the benefit of the person’shealth, as access to the file may cause more distressthan denying access to the file’s contents. Is this,then, an issue of procedural fairness, where oneparty to the proceeding has access to more of thematerial in question than another party?The President of the Board further stated that, inthis jurisdiction, experience has shown that this isnot an issue of note. He concluded that one reasonfor this was that, historically, individuals have beendisempowered by the actions of service providersto such an extent that they are unaware that theyare entitled to see their own file. This leads to theconclusion that access to information is only aproblem if a person knows there is a problem.What access do you think they should have totheir case information? The right to inspectdocuments, case file, doctors’ reports, that sortof thing.I think the Act sets up a general proposition ofup to 24 hours but I think in practice it should beas much as is needed for the individual’s case. Ithink the reality is again that some people like tothoroughly review those things, others couldn’t66