Mental health law

Mental health law

One key difference between mental health and other aspects of healthcare is the ability to detain patients against their will using the Mental Health Act.

The 1959 Mental Health Act provided for patients to be treated informally but did not provide clarity about the powers to impose medical treatment against a person’s wish. The 1983 Mental Health Act did place legal controls on the applications of treatments, particularly psychosurgery, electroconvul-sive therapy and mood-altering drugs. It also moved the responsibility for formal admission to hospital into the hands of approved social workers and psychiatrists.

The 1983 Act provides for people to be detained for treatment using a variety of schedules:

·      to be detained for assessment (schedule 2)

·      to be detained for treatment (schedule 3)

·      to be transferred from prison to hospital for treatment (section 37).

The 1983 Act also provided the first opportunity for patients detained under the Act to have a say in their drug treatment. Section 57, more commonly called the ‘Consent to Treatment’ regulations, provides an opportunity to review the continuing requirement for the medicines after 3 months of detention.

Inevitably any mental health Act is a compromise between the tensions identified in Table 13.1.

Between 1999 and 2006 there was an extensive review of the Mental Health Act 1983 and attempts to develop a new Act. One major change in the 2007 Amendment Act was the power to detain and treat patients while discharged into the community; this is via the community treatment order.