Eric Trupin, PhD, Sarah Cusworth Walker, PhD, Hathaway Burden, and Mary Helen Roberts
Mental health diversion programs show promise in effectively addressing the treatment needs of youth with mental health and substance use disorders who come in contact with the justice system.
Even seasoned doctors can have trouble confronting the topic of death. For medical students, training and role modeling are needed to make them valuable to patients facing death.
Situations in which the patient’s family seems not to be acting in good faith or the patient's suffering is uncontrollable are relatively rare and do not warrant giving physicians unilateral power to withhold or withdraw treatment in all cases of perceived medical futility.
Incarcerated pregnant women are shackled while giving birth and routinely separated from their children immediately, which in many states leads to permanent termination of parental rights.
Forcing parents to participate in treatment is unlikely to succeed. Seeking to optimize the therapeutic alliance between family and pediatrician is more likely to achieve the desired outcome—the child’s short- and long-term well-being.