Advanced Healthcare Directives From a Comparative Perspective and Proposals for Turkish Law

Abstract

As a result of the aging population and the improvement in average life expectancy, the visibility of psychiatric diseases causing loss of mental competence has considerably increased. The aging population presently enjoys expanded options in social life and improved support within the legal system. These positive changes resulted from the combined effort of the academic and legislative bodies toward finding ways to support patient autonomy and self-involvement in decision-making in case of loss of mental competence. This article focuses on the regulations, known as the advance healthcare directives, prepared for application when a drafter loses mental capacity. The genesis of this concept and efforts toward its adoption are discussed and analyzed from a comparative lens. This study examines advance healthcare directives in a wider sense, including instruction directives and durable powers of attorney. As Turkish law lacks a legal rule providing for bindingness for these kinds of dispositions, certain de lege ferenda proposals in line with the comparative findings have been proposed at the end of this paper.