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If they don't know you are suicidal they shouldn't be refusing this. It is your right to refuse medical treatment (so long as they don't think it's related to your mental illness). If this many doctors are refusing I would get a lawyer. Even if you have a mental health history you still should be allowed to have one, they just null and void it in cases of self-harm and suicide.
Exactly. It will be up to the doctor whether they decide to resuscitate you. You may have a legal leg to stand on if you were of sound mind when you signed the DNR. It's really up to the individual doctor if he wants to risk the legalities. I got lucky in that I have.a DNR. My doctor totally believes it's my decision.
The only case where a DNR can be ignored is if you are believed to have caused harm to yourself on purpose. If you want a DNR it is your right to get one, you just have to be aware that it is not going to be fulfilled if you knowingly attempted suicide. However, a doctor cannot deny you the right to simply have a signed DNR on the grounds of "being too young". It is your legal right to refuse care when you are of what they consider a sound mind, and a DNR in this case would cover if you had an unrelated accident or medical emergency and were unable to refuse care in the moment due to being unconscious. They cannot refuse you that based on age. In the US patients deemed not a threat to themselves or others have the right to refuse any care that they wish, and a DNR is essentially preplanned care refusal, they cannot deny that. What doctor signed the DNR is not important. They are just the ones who signed it. Their signature does not mean that it will be honored when you end up in the ER after you tried to down a bottle of SN, that is up to the doctors in the emergency room. And I can tell you right now, any doctor who knows it was a suicide attempt is going to save you because that is a huge risk to their license if they honor the DNR. By the same token, it doesn't matter who signed it, if you come in after a car wreck and they see you have a DNR, they cannot start chest compressions whether they believe you could be saved or not. If you are not a threat to yourself, the DNR must be honored if they know about it. If you are a threat to yourself, it won't be. But it is your right to have one there. A doctor does not face any legalities for signing a preemptive DNR unless you're going to them and saying "yeah I'm planning on offing myself soon".
I looked up some local caselaw for my state and it looks like DNRs have to be honored in all cases that they cover, regardless of circumstance. I guess my challenge is crafting a DNR that would encompass a suicide attempt and convincing a doctor to sign it.
Does your state not have provisions for suicide attempts? If nothing about attempts is explicitly stated in the legislation, I'd suggest seeing if any cases have been brought to court in your state. In my state, suicidal patients are assumed to not be of sound mind, so they can't legally give informed consent for a DNR. If it's not explicitly discussed in your local laws, it may depend upon hospital policy—which kind of defaults to DNRs not being followed for suicidal patients bc no one wants to put their license on the line for that. Which will be your same problem getting a doctor to sign a DNR that covers suicide attempts or if you have a history of mental illness. It's also important to note that a DNR doesn't mean that a hospital can't treat you. I'm sure you're aware from looking at the laws, but a DNR goes into effect once the heart stops beating or you stop breathing
Based on the (admittedly limited) research I did, as well as inquiring with the hospital social workers when filling out the DNR for my father it seems like the law had a carve-out for suicide but the courts gutted it, and said that a valid DNR must be enforced in all cases that it applies. I don't have a medical history of suicide attempts, and have avoided hospitalization so far. That should be sufficient enough to have a doctor grant me a DNR order.
