Advance Directives

Definitions:

1. Advance Directive: A written document in which people clearly specify how medical decisions affecting them are to be made if they are unable to make them, or to authorize a specific person to make such decisions for them.

2. Psychiatric Advance Directive: A relatively new legal instrument that may be used to document a competent person’s specific instructions or preferences regarding future mental health treatment, in preparation for the possibility that the person may lose capacity to give or withhold informed consent to treatment during acute episodes of psychiatric illness.

3. Living Will: A legal document that a person uses to make known his or her wishes regarding life prolonging medical treatment.