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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Sexual consent capacity
— ethical issues and challenges in long-term care | | Author(s) | Jennifer Hillman |
| Journal title | Clinical Gerontologist, vol 40, no 1, January-February 2017 |
| Publisher | Taylor and Francis, January-February 2017 |
| Pages | pp 43-50 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Sexual activity ; Attitude ; Rights [elderly] ; Social ethics ; Residents [care homes] ; Nursing homes ; Care homes ; Evaluation ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | More than two million Americans live in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. Available research suggests that the majority of older nursing home residents (including those with some degree of cognitive impairment) place significant value on engaging in sexual activity. With nearly half of all residents suffering from dementia, psychologists and other mental health professionals often face significant challenges in the assessment of their patients' sexual consent capacity. A primary ethical issue is to balance an individual resident's rights to autonomy and privacy with a facility's need to protect residents from harm. Sexual consent capacity functions on a continuum across time and behaviour. It also cannot be predetermined by proxy, in which an individual prepares legal documents ahead of time to identify a surrogate decision maker. Sexual consent capacity must be determined by information obtained in the present moment. This paper presents an approach to the assessment of residents' sexual consent capacity, which encompasses knowledge, reasoning and voluntariness, along with a brief overview of sexual activity among long-term care residents. It offers a case example to illustrate complex clinical dilemmas involving staff attitudes, residents' rights and family dynamics. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-171124203 A |
| Classmark | BIU: DP: IKR: TQ: KX: LHB: KW: 4C: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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