Placed Amongst Strangers– the Tenth Biennial Report (2001–2003) of the Mental Health Act Commission

Mat Kinton*

The Mental Health Act Commission’s Tenth Biennial Report was laid before Parliament and published in December 2003. The report covers two years’ activity – financial years 2001 to 2003– monitoring the operation of the Mental Health Act 1983 as it relates to the detention and treatment of patients. In twenty chapters it deals with a range of issues pertinent to the care of mental health patients subject to compulsory treatment.

I will not attempt here to list systematically the points made by our report. Readers ofthis journal are likely already to have thumbed a copy of the report itself, or accessed it on the Commission website(1), and, if not, I hope that this article will encourage them to do so. Instead, I will seek to explain in more general terms the context and themes of the report, and what we would wish to see as its desired outcome.

Footnotes:
*Senior Policy Analyst, Mental Health Act Commission
(1) www.mhac.trent.nhs.uk

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