ABSTRACT
It would be ageist to assume that all elderly people are unhealthy and ‘senile’. Even the ‘oldest-old’ (i.e., people older than 85) can enjoy good physical and mental health (Neugarten, 1990). Nevertheless, as people grow older, there is an increased likelihood that they will require acute and/or chronic care and will experience more or less substantial mental impairment due to strokes and dementing illnesses, such as Alzheimer’s disease (US Congress, 1987; Cummings and Jarvik, 1990).1 Accordingly, while the elderly are more likely to need medical services, they are also more likely to lack the capacity to make decisions about their own health care, and it is not an overstatement to maintain that ‘decision-making under circumstances of mental incapacity is a particularly relevant issue in the care of elderly persons’ (Uhlmann et al., 1988, M115).
