Treatment and refusal rights in mental health: therapeutic justice and clinical accommodation

The impact of recognition by courts and legislatures in the 1970s and early 1980s of patients' rights to receive or to refuse mental health treatment is evaluated. The implementation of these rights in practice does not appear to have exerted an unduly disruptive or destructive effect on mental health services or their clienteles. At the same time, their recognition has not led to the salutary therapeutic jurisprudence envisioned by their proponents.