Advance statements, advance directives, or psychiatric wills are a key component of a shift to mental healthcare that promotes autonomy and choice and aims to reduce restrictive and coercive care practices in mental health treatment settings. The use of advance statements has gained momentum to provide a means for individuals to detail clear preferences for mental health treatment. This paper uses a qualitative descriptive design to explore the experiences of clinicians (n = 15) implementing advance statements in the state of Victoria, Australia, a region that introduced advance statements as part of an overhaul of mental health legislation in 2014. The study, reported using the COREQ framework, found two key themes after analysis: experiences of advance statement training, with the availability and quality of training and training as a driver of change emerging as sub-themes, and experiences of advance statements in practice, with participants providing narratives of the barriers and facilitators to successful advance statement implementation. We recommend that clinician and service user experiences of advance statement implementation are further explored to identify existing and emerging barriers to implementation of these tools, which are crucial to achieve autonomy and choice for individuals receiving mental healthcare.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	advance statement, mental health, autonomy, advance directive
Research Division:	Health Sciences
Research Group:	Nursing
Research Field:	Mental health nursing
Objective Division:	Health
Objective Group:	Provision of health and support services
Objective Field:	Mental health services
UTAS Author:	James, R (Dr Russell James)
ID Code:	147025
Year Published:	2021
Web of Science® Times Cited:	1
Deposited By:	Nursing
Deposited On:	2021-10-11
Last Modified:	2021-11-10
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