Power of Attorney to avoid antipsychotic medication

Wow, it has been a long time since I have been on here. I have graduated from college and got a job in I.T. and have been working full time ever since, and my life has been really quite good overall. I still have the same partner which I live with, and my relationship with my parents is quite good. I have not been arrested in years, and I have not seen any mental health professional of any kind for years, that is until last week.

At 7 a.m. on a Wednesday I heard a knock at the front door. I was expecting a package from Amazon, so I opened the door. It was some lady with a clipboard and an employee badge. She said her name and her employer (a local mental health clinic with government funding) and said she had trouble reaching me by phone, read off the number a very outdated pay as you go cell phone I had years ago and acted a bit peeved and hostile towards me. I gave her my Google Voice number so I can easily screen her calls if she does call me, and I can record her phone calls as well by simply pressing 4 on my phone as soon as I answer the phone. I asked her what this was all about and she said I was still on their roster of S.M.I. patients and that they had to keep tabs on me. Once you're labelled SMI good luck ever getting off of it. I explained my life was good, and I had not been in trouble with the law or hospitalized in a number of years and that I wanted nothing to do with her SMI "Services" as they call them. She handed me her business card and said she would stay in touch with me.

It pisses me off that after I thought this was all long over with, it just comes right back at me all over again. It stokes the flames of my already paranoid mind.

I went ahead and talked to a private lawyer about it and I paid him for it and he suggested a mental health power of attorney that specifies that I do not want any antipsychotic medications etc. So, I got one filled out, signed and notarized. I chose my boyfriend to make all healthcare and mental health decisions for me if necessary, and I very specifically stated that I do not want any psychiatric drugs administered to me under any circumstances. I chose my boyfriend because he knows all the struggles I've been through and he is on my side. I simply trust him more than I do my parents. I love them, but I don't trust them. They got all this started on me back when I was a teenager and it follows me all these years later.

Anyways, there are conflicting points of view on mental health powers of attorney. Some say they work, others say they don't. They are relatively cheap to get done and I say they are worth at try. They just might save you from something quite awful.

I found a webpage that says that they do work at preventing unwanted antipsychotic meds being administered on inpatient basis. I don't know if they will work on an outpatient basis, which is what I might face personally....

A particularly problematic area addressed by the panel was the situation in which conferred legal powers are inconsistent either with the standard of care or with the needs of the ward. It is possible for a ward to create an advanced directive (AD) or mental health power of attorney (MHPOA) stating that he or she wants no psychiatric intervention of any kind at a time when he or she is not competent to make mental health care decisions.

This issue was litigated in Hargrave v. Vermont.[3] In 1999, Ms. Hargrave executed a durable power of attorney (POA) for health care stating that she refused “any or all antipsychotics, neuroleptics, psychotropics, or psychoactive medications.” When Ms. Hargrave subsequently experienced an acute psychiatric crisis, the state of Vermont filed an involuntary civil commitment petition to override her directives in order to obtain necessary care for her.

The Second Circuit found that the state could not require Ms. Hargrave to receive psychiatric medication against the desires expressed in her AD, which had been executed at a time when she was deemed competent. The court ruled that the Vermont law allowing the state to involuntarily medicate individuals who had been civilly committed or judged mentally ill while imprisoned, despite having previously executed durable POA for health care to the contrary, was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I am going to add a link to the fairly lengthy PDF format of the 2nd Circuit Court's ruling in her favor where they conclude that they were violating the ADA by making her take psych meds against her power of attorney. You should download it and then upload it to your own Google Drive for safe keeping. Give a copy of it to your lawyer or to anyone who may not realize that at least one court has already ruled in favor of a person's mental health power of attorney. You may want to include a citation of this ruling in your own power of attorney before you get it notarized. I wish I had done that now.

...

CONCLUSION
To summarize: We hold that (i) plaintiffs alleged a sufficient injury-in-fact to support
standing to challenge Act 114; (ii) this case is ripe for adjudication; (iii) Act 114 violates the ADA by
distingushing between “qualified individuals” on the basis of mental illness; and (iv) the District
Court’s injunction prohibiting enforcement of certain provisions of Act 114 does not constitute a
fundamental alteration to Vermont’s DPOA program.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the District Court is affirmed.
*link removed- privacy concerns*

Hello.

I'll start with saying good work on what is safe to assume was recovery by work you did yourself, I'd be very proud of I was you.

You have been extremely proactive and honestly the situation you're in sounds like a mental health dystopian nightmare, one must wonder if they didn't update the projected patient numbers and pre filled list so they could receive funding, it happens often, so drumming up business they will go to keep funding and of course if they have to throw you under the bus to get that funding it would be inconsequential to them to do that.

This POA move is brilliant and you have the ability to sight a previous case and judgement which is excellent news.

It's amazing how quickly people will use and indeed create a power that is easily abused, it's almost as if our species is a predatory monstrosity at its core and even more so in a group setting (Salem witch burnings anyone?).

Which it is, all you have to do is go from inside to outside and your chance of being abused rises to a ridiculous percentage of we are indeed as advertised a kind specie.

They say Neanderthals were feeling creatures, well to me that's not a good thing, a feeling is nothing but a manipulated thought, sped up and slowed down for the pleasure of analysis.

I've read through and if you are harassed by this individual claiming to know your current circumstances and understanding your needs by this, I would recommend filing a harassment suit or at least get an order against them.

All you need to do is prove you haven't used their services either before or in a substantial amount of time e.g 12-24 months, therefore they have no basis to contact you, I've been through this before as a child while I went through my ridiculous social science phase, I no longer care for their retroactively applied logic, poor grounds for suspicion or the megaphone they give their egos as well as detest their enablers, when it comes to psychology every trial is the Salem witch trials, not requiring concrete evidence, just a "feeling" something that society no longer requires you to explain until it fits with logic.

Well,during a "mock" trial that was made up during a focus group, the facts are the basis for your case and require nothing interpretive in the context that it would be a feeling, you are able to prove their services were not tailored to you specifically, that you haven't been engaged with them, their information is outdated and statistics dictate most likely wrong to begin with given the rate of misdiagnosis and changes to your diagnosis e.g reasoning which can be caused by recovering new information and adding it to the ass up assumption they were correct the first time despite having nothing but evidence to the contrary.

You will be fine.

I'm happy to support you if you need it.

Congrats on the degree and job, you've done well.

Matthew