Cara Newlon is a third-year J.D. Candidate at Yale Law School. She received her B.A. from Brown University (2014). Ian Ayres, Ph.D., J.D., is the William K. Townsend Professor and Deputy Dean at Yale Law School. He received his B.A. from Yale College (1981), his J.D. (1986) from Yale Law School, and his Ph.D. in Economics (1988) from MIT. Brian Barnett, M.D., is a psychiatrist and researcher at the Cleveland Clinic. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania (2008) and his M.D. from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (2013). He completed his residency in adult psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital in 2017, followed by a fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry at Partners Healthcare in 2018 and a fellowship in Forensic Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University in 2019.
J Law Med Ethics. 2020 Dec;48(4_suppl):155-163. doi: 10.1177/1073110520979417.
This first-of-its-kind national survey of 485 psychiatrists in nine states and the District of Columbia (DC) finds substantial evidence of clinicians being uninformed, misinformed, and misinforming patients of their gun rights regarding involuntary commitments and voluntary inpatient admissions. A significant percentage of psychiatrists (36.9%) did not understand that an involuntary civil commitment triggered the loss of gun rights, and the majority of psychiatrists in states with prohibitors on voluntary admissions (57%) and emergency holds (56%) were unaware that patients would lose gun rights upon voluntary admission or temporary commitment. Moreover, the survey found evidence that psychiatrists may use gun rights to negotiate "voluntary" commitments with patients: 15.9% of respondents reported telling patients they could preserve their gun rights by permitting themselves to be voluntarily admitted for treatment, in lieu of being involuntarily committed. The results raise questions of whether psychiatrists obtained full informed consent for voluntary patient admissions, and suggest that some medical providers in states with voluntary admission prohibitor laws may unwittingly deprive their patients of a constitutional right. The study calls into question the fairness of state prohibitor laws as policy, and - at minimum - indicates an urgent need for psychiatrist training on their state gun laws.
这项在九个州和哥伦比亚特区（DC）对 485 名精神科医生进行的首例全国性调查发现，大量证据表明临床医生对非自愿住院和自愿住院的患者的枪支权利不知情、信息有误且误导了患者。相当一部分精神科医生（36.9%）不知道非自愿民事拘留会导致丧失枪支权利，而在禁止自愿住院和紧急拘留的州的大多数精神科医生（57%）不知道患者在自愿住院或临时拘留时会失去枪支权利。此外，调查发现有证据表明，精神科医生可能会利用枪支权利与患者协商“自愿”住院：15.9%的受访者报告称，他们告诉患者，如果允许自己自愿接受治疗而不是非自愿住院，就可以保留枪支权利。这些结果引发了人们对精神科医生是否为自愿住院的患者获得了充分的知情同意的质疑，并表明在有自愿住院禁令的州，一些医疗服务提供者可能在不知不觉中剥夺了患者的宪法权利。这项研究对州禁令法作为政策的公平性提出了质疑，至少表明需要对州枪支法进行精神科医生培训。
