Title: Mental health legislation in the era of community psychiatry
Abstract: Psychiatry, unlike other medical specialties, frequently involves the treatment of patients against their will. Criteria and rules governing compulsion are set out in mental health legislation. In response to major shifts in the nature of mental health services, particularly its emphasis on community-based rather than hospital-based treatment, many have argued that mental health legislation needs reform to take account of these changes. In turn, this has led to new questions about the underlying assumptions and justifications shaping mental health legislation. In England and Wales, the Mental Health Act 1959 marked a transition from the ‘legalism’ of the Lunacy Act 1890, with its 19th-century libertarian concerns, to a welfare statute in which decisions about involuntary treatment for mental disorders became primarily a matter for doctors. In the Mental Health Act 1983 a revived form of legalism set some limits to medical discretion. A recent White Paper followed by a draft Mental Health Bill (Department of Health, 2002), a modified form of which will soon be presented in Parliament, promises to mark a new shift in which professional discretion is extremely broad in terms of definitions of mental disorder and treatment, but where considerations of risk are uppermost.
Publication Year: 2004
Publication Date: 2004-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 6
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