What does the capacity to consent to treatment entail and what factors influence it? To date, most research has focussed on individual factors that impair capacity to consent to treatment, such as intelligence, cognitive capacity and symptoms of mental illness. In this presentation, I want to explore the social and interpersonal factors that influence capacity to consent. I discuss the complexity of individual and social interactions and discuss coercion in two forms; overt coercion such as is found in mental hospitals, and relational coercion, arising from dependency needs [1].