Mental Health Law for the 21st Century?

Mat Kinton(1)

Lord Shaftesbury complained that it took him ‘seventeen years of labour and anxiety’ to get the Lunacy Act 1845 onto the statute books(2). The revision of the Mental Health Act 1983 is also turning out to be a long and difficult process, both for Government and for those that it calls ‘stakeholders’ in mental health services. What follows does not seek to examine that process,although it relies heavily on the public sessions of the Joint Committee on the draft Mental Health Bill (hereafter ‘the Joint Committee’). Nor will I attempt to summarise the Mental Health Act Commission’s public comments on the draft Bill of 2004, which are readily available(3). My conclusions, especially insofar as they exhibit a certain pessimism over the future direction of mental health law, are a personal view rather than one which is necessarily held by the MHAC.

Footnotes:
(1) Senior Policy Analyst, Mental Health Act Commission. This article was accepted for publication before (a) the Joint Parliamentary Scrutiny Committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill reported (23rd March 2005), and(b) the Mental Capacity Bill received the Royal Assent (7th April 2005).
(2) Mental Health Act Commission (2003) Placed Amongst Strangers: Tenth Biennial Report. London,Stationery Office, p 290.
(3) Joint Committee evidence DMH 20, DMH 90. Available from www.mhac.org.uk

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