Repeal Mental Health and Mental Capacity Acts

The Independent Review of the Mental Health Act 1983 (see previous post) has produced its final report ‘Modernising the Mental Health Act: Increasing choice, reducing compulsion’. It is disappointing, as Suman Fernando says in his blog, although not surprisingly so. It gets the government ‘off the hook’ of having to do anything about the observations from the Committee on the Rights of People with Disabilities about the UK government’s response to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The proposals made for change are minimal and will do little to prevent the unacceptable, including racist and abusive, treatment of detained patients (eg. see another previous post). CRPD is being ignored by suggesting that it prevents involuntary detention, which I don’t think is the case and in fact the Independent Review concedes this. Instead current legislation should be repealed and replaced by new legislation to preserve the dignity and respect of detained patients.