ABSTRACT
The person giving consent to treatment or refusing to give consent to treatment must be mentally competent to do so.
Commentary A patient will be presumed to have the necessary mental capacity to consent or refuse consent to the medical treatment on offer; the onus will be upon those who seek to argue that the patient is indeed mentally incompetent to show this. In Re C [1994] 1 All ER 819, Thorpe J said, ‘I am completely satisfied that the presumption that C has the right of self-determination has not been displaced’ (p824).
