THE PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE--THE "ACHILLES HEEL" OF THE ROMANIAN MENTAL HEALTH LAW SYSTEM

The psychiatric law system was created with the sole purpose of protecting patients with mental illnesses, a vulnerable segment of the population. The laws regarding voluntary and non-voluntary admission of mental patients have been reformed in many European countries. After 1989, Romania starts to gradually benefit from a law system that meets the requirements of modern society. From this general context the Mental Health Law takes form, with the main purpose of ratifying the relationship between patient and psychiatrist. This system provides a new, more modern approach but also proves to have certain flaws. One of the most obvious is the aspect regarding the personal representative, which generates both ethical and professional conduit problems, difficult to manage from the standpoint of modern medicine. Minimizing the effects of such an error is possible by simply considering the small number of solutions suggested by the author in the end of this article.