Current appeal system for those detained in England and Wales under the Mental Health Act needs reform

Abstract

The approach to managing the involuntary detention of people suffering from psychiatric conditions can be divided into those with clinicians at the forefront of decision-making and those who rely heavily on the judiciary. The system in England and Wales takes a clinical approach where doctors have widespread powers to detain and treat patients involuntarily. A protection in this system is the right of the individual to challenge a decision to deprive them of their liberty or treat them against their will. This protection is provided by the First-tier Tribunal; however, the number of successful appeals is low. In this paper, the system of appeal in England and Wales is outlined. This is followed by a discussion of why so few patients successfully appeal their detention with the conclusion that the current system is flawed. A number of recommendations about how the system might be reformed are offered.

Implementation of the Mental Capacity Act (Northern Ireland) 2016: Social workers’ experiences

“…There is no other directly comparable research in Northern Ireland. There has been some research in Northern Ireland focusing on the operation of Mental Health Review Tribunals (Campbell, 2008) and in other jurisdictions (Maylea and Ryan, 2017;Gosney et al, 2019;Macgregor et al, 2019;Markham, 2020) but so far very little research on the implementation of the Act. There is some research from other countries about how similar laws and safeguards have been implemented (Hinsliff-Smith et al, 2017) including a study that focused on social workers (McDonald, 2010).…”