Fourteen, and sure of it
A fourteen year old comes to you through her school counsellor with panic attacks. In the first ...
Decision diagram
Consent to treatment, capacity and substitute decisions
Step through a proposed treatment and find whose consent you need, what makes it valid, who decides when the client cannot, and how they must decide, with the provision that governs each step.
Answer the questions below one at a time. Then run the three practice cases further down to test it.
Every branch below carries the provision it rests on, read against the consolidated Health Care Consent Act, 1996 on e-Laws on 23 and 25 September 2026, together with CRPO Standard 3.2. Nothing here is legal advice, and a finding of incapacity is a clinical judgment that deserves consultation and a careful note.
Is what you propose treatment under the Act?
Psychotherapy is treatment, and so is a change of approach within it. The definition leaves out, among other things, assessing capacity, assessing a person to determine the general nature of their condition, taking a health history, communicating an assessment or diagnosis, and a treatment that in the circumstances poses little or no risk of harm.
What decides this step
HCCA s. 2 (1), definition of "treatment"
“"treatment" means anything that is done for a therapeutic, preventive, palliative, diagnostic, cosmetic or other health-related purpose, and includes a course of treatment, plan of treatment or community treatment plan”
Three cases to run through it
Three clients, three different endings, and one of them needs no substitute and no special step at all: the client decides.
Whatever you think is best
A client signed an intake form four months ago agreeing to "the therapist's therapeutic approach...
Forty years married, no papers
A woman with advanced dementia is referred for supportive psychotherapy after she and her husban...