A few weeks ago, I posted a blog on preparing for partner relapse. In that blog, I briefly discussed psychiatric advance directives (PADs), and felt that this topic was important enough to have a blog post of its own.
According to the National Resource Center on Psychiatric Advance Directives, “Psychiatric advance directives are relatively new legal instruments 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.”
Being relatively new, psychiatric advance directives are not widely discussed–or even known about–in the mental health world. However, they can literally be lifesavers if you have a partner with a mental illness that may land them in the hospital. As the supportive partner, you need to play a large role in helping to create the PAD, because if your partner is ill enough to need it, it will be up to you to make sure the PAD is followed during your partner’s treatment.

The rest of the article http://blogs.psychcentral.com/wellne...-need-to-know/

This is aimed at our partners but do you have an advance directive?