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Transcending mental health law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Liz Sayce
Liz Sayce*
Affiliation:
MIND, Granta House, 15–19 Broadway, London E15 4BQ
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We live in an era in which debates on the need for mental health reform are over-focused on single issues (like how to ‘get people who live in the community to keep taking their medication’) or, even worse, single cases (how to prevent another tragedy like the killing by Jason Mitchell). This prevents rational policy-making. Unusual cases make bad law. Narrow proposals for risk reduction ignore many of the most pertinent risks: that service users will be victims of attack, but have no access to justice because they are not seen as ‘credible witnesses’; or that they will be detained for fear of violence when in fact they would not have been violent (Sayce, 1995). The recent statement on prime time British TV by Dr Deahl that he would rather detain nine people unnecessarily than discharge one who went on to harm a member of the public, shows how ‘single issue’ risk analysis can lead straight to breaches of natural justice (‘Panorama’, 13 October 1997, British Broadcasting Corporation).

Type
Review Articles
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 22 , Issue 11 , November 1998 , pp. 669 - 670
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

References

Chamberlin, J. (1994) Legal and Ethical Dilemma in Serving Persons with Mental Disabilities. Boston, MA: National Empowerment Center.Google Scholar
Mac Arthur Research Network (1998) The Mac Arthur Treatment Competence Study . Executive Summary. Charlottesville, VA: Virginia.Google Scholar
Sayce, L. (1995) Response to violence: A framework for fair treatment. In Psychiatric Patient Violence (ed. Crighton, J.). London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Szmukler, G. & Holloway, F. (1998) Mental health legislation is now a harmful anachronism. Psychiatric Bulletin, 22, 662–665.Google Scholar
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