preview

Tardive Dyskinesia

Decent Essays

Imagine your psychosis was deteriorated so severely that you were harming yourself and needed treatment but denied due to your mental status. “J.S., a twenty-four-year-old male schizophrenic, has been taking antipsychotic medication regularly since the age of fourteen,” as stated in Cases in Bioethics from The Hastings Center Report by Carol Levine and Robert Vasch. “Four years ago he was admitted to private mental hospital where he was treated with moderately high doses of Prolixin, a powerful neuroleptic.” J.S started to experience symptoms and was diagnosed with tardive dyskinesia. Dr. James Robert Brasic who wrote on Medscape’s article on tardive dyskinesia, “Tardive dyskinesias (TDs) are involuntary movements of the tongue, lips, face, …show more content…

“J.S. was accepted into the program, and signed consent forms for treatment with experimental drugs,” Levine and Veatch states. After being taken off medication, he went into a psychotic state and “refused the experimental medication.” “The researchers then suggested going ahead with the treatment anyway. Since the patient had consented during his competent hours, they argued that it didn’t matter if he changed his mind later; the ‘Ulysses contract’ was binding.” The Ulysses contract originated from the Greek myth of Odysseus, or Ulysses, who was told by Circe to be tied to the mast of his ship when passing by the Sirens, “were beautiful but dangerous creatures that lured the sailors with their beautiful voices to their doom, causing the ships to crash on the reefs near their island” (greekmythology.com). “...she urged that I/ alone should listen to their song. Therefore/ you are to tie me up, tight as a splint,/ erect along the mast, lashed to the mast,/ and if I shout and beg to be untied,/ take more turns of the rope to muffle me” (12.193-98). He begged for his crew to untie him after the sirens starting singing, but his crew refused to listen. This was the Ulysses contract. J. S. in his psychotic state is analogous to the state in which Odysseus was in when he listened to the song of the Sirens. The researchers, in this case,

Get Access