© 2008 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Three Stories: The Mental Capacity Act
St George’s Hospital, Corporation Street, Stafford ST16 3AG, email: giles.berrisford{at}nhs.uk
Office of the Public Guardian, 2007, available online at http://www.publicguardian.gov.uk/mca/three-stories.htm
Three Stories is a 15-minute documentary depicting the experiences of three individuals who have benefited from the implementation of the Mental Capacity Act (1 October 2007). It offers a useful introduction to the ideas of incapacity, of how capacity may be impaired and what safeguards have been introduced following the Act.
Each story explores capacity issues from a different perspective. The first is told through an account of a person with a mild learning disability, where the Act can be seen to promote autonomous decision making and empowerment. The second story looks at the effects of dementia and how the Act can help individuals and their families faced with a sudden reduction in capacity to make decisions. The final story focuses on a young couple planning for the future loss of capacity brought about by long-term illness, in this case motor neurone disorder.
Each story enabled the basic tenets of the Act to be explored from the real people’s perspective and their experiences. It is not the aim of the film to teach its audience the minutiae of the Act, but simply to introduce some key ideas, such as the ‘lasting power of attorney’ and ‘deputies’, which can then be built upon by further study. This is achieved with varying degrees of success for each of the three stories.
The film offers an introduction to the whole area of capacity, which could be particularly useful for carers and other healthcare professionals with little previous exposure. By using broad brush strokes it explains the types of difficulties faced by people with impaired capacity the Act hopes to overcome. The stories themselves have something of a ‘feel-good’ quality to them, with all participants extremely happy with their experience of the Act, making the film somewhat self-congratulatory.
Three Stories does, however, provide a good starting point for further enquiry. It gives clear examples of the types of situations the Act is designed to help with and it introduces key concepts and gives advice as to where further information can be found.
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