Is this a revolution? The impact of the Human Rights Act on Mental Health Law

Paul Bowen*

In ‘Almost a Revolution: Mental Health Law and the Limits of Change’, Prof. Paul Applebaum,writing in 1994, describes a period of tumultuous change in the United States during the late 1960s in civil rights and mental health law and which lasted nearly three decades(1). At the end of that period, he concluded, there had been little real and substantial change to mental health law in the United States. This article looks at some of the changes to mental health law that have already been wrought in England & Wales by the Human Rights Act 1998 and briefly considers its potential for creating real and substantial change in the longer term.

Footnotes:
* Barrister, Doughty Street Chambers, London
(1) Applebaum P, ‘Almost a Revolution: Mental Health Law and the Limits of change’, (Oxford University Press) (1994)

Price: £3.00

 

<< Back to previous page