Habilitation, Healthy Agency, and Patient-Participation

Abstract

This chapter argues, on ethical grounds, that wherever possible patient-participation must be kept consistent with the level of healthy rational agency that is, or might be, available to the patient. Merely compliant patient-participation is not enough. This is also true of patient-adaptation or adjustment. Mere adaptive compliance is not enough. Accepting patient-consent, cooperation, and compliance as an adequate indication of genuine agentic participation is often hard to avoid, but such acceptance is also often inconsistent with appropriate healthcare. These conclusions follow, as a matter of empirically informed practical ethics, from an analysis of the lifelong habilitative tasks that face every human being, and the role that the patient's healthy agency plays in the development, protection, or restoration of the patient's agency itself and the patient's basic good health generally.