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Removal to a place of safety is a form of detention.
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Removal to a place of safety is a form of detention.
As to Queensland, see sections 25 to 27 of the Mental Health Act 1974. [1]
As to Tasmania, see sections 99 and 100 of the Mental Health Act 1963 (No 63). [2]
The term "place of safety" is a technical term used in mental health law in England and Wales. It is used in the Mental Health Act 1983, an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom [3] that forms part of the mental health law of the jurisdiction of England and Wales.
Section 136 of the Act gives police officers the power to remove an apparently mentally disordered person who is in a public place and is apparently a danger to himself or to other people, to a "place of safety" where they may be assessed by a doctor. [4]
Section 135 of the Act gives police powers to remove a person who is not in a public place to a place of safety after the issue of a warrant by a Justice of the Peace. [5]
These provisions replace the corresponding provisions in sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act 1959. [6]
According to a unilateral statement by the Home Office, places of safety should typically be hospitals, other medical facilities, residential care homes or the home of a relative or friend of the person; police stations should only be used as a "place of safety" as a last resort. [7]
In practice, local agreements between local authorities, NHS Trusts and police constabularies are in place, designating certain establishments as places of safety. The owners or managers of an establishment acting as a place of safety have a legal obligation to ensure that a detained person cannot leave the premises until he or she has been fully assessed, which may take up to 24 hours. Invariably, therefore, to ensure safeguarding of both the detained person and the public, places of safety are typically restricted to psychiatric hospitals and police custody suites, and tend to exclude open general hospital wards and accident and emergency departments. For the same reason, it is most unusual for friends' or relatives' homes to be designated places of safety.
The decision whether to detain a particular person in a psychiatric hospital or in police custody is also subject to local agreements. It is a common arrangement for people to be taken to a psychiatric hospital unless they have a history of violence or are thought to be under the influence of alcohol or recreational drugs, in which cases they would be taken into police custody.
As to Scotland, see section 297 of the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) Act 2003.
Outpatient commitment—also called assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) or community treatment orders (CTO)—refers to a civil court procedure wherein a legal process orders an individual diagnosed with a severe mental disorder to adhere to an outpatient treatment plan designed to prevent further deterioration or recurrence that is harmful to themselves or others.
Forensic psychiatry is a subspeciality of psychiatry and is related to criminology. It encompasses the interface between law and psychiatry. According to the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, it is defined as "a subspecialty of psychiatry in which scientific and clinical expertise is applied in legal contexts involving civil, criminal, correctional, regulatory, or legislative matters, and in specialized clinical consultations in areas such as risk assessment or employment." A forensic psychiatrist provides services – such as determination of competency to stand trial – to a court of law to facilitate the adjudicative process and provide treatment, such as medications and psychotherapy, to criminals.
The Lanterman–Petris–Short (LPS) Act regulates involuntary civil commitment to a mental health institution in the state of California. The act set the precedent for modern mental health commitment procedures in the United States. The bipartisan bill was co-authored by California State Assemblyman Frank D. Lanterman (R) and California State Senators Nicholas C. Petris (D) and Alan Short (D), and signed into law in 1967 by Governor Ronald Reagan. The Act went into full effect on July 1, 1972. It cited seven articles of intent:
The Mental Health Act 1983 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It covers the reception, care and treatment of mentally disordered people, the management of their property and other related matters, forming part of the mental health law for the people in England and Wales. In particular, it provides the legislation by which people diagnosed with a mental disorder can be detained in a hospital or police custody and have their disorder assessed or treated against their wishes, informally known as "sectioning". Its use is reviewed and regulated by the Care Quality Commission. The Act was significantly amended by the Mental Health Act 2007. A white paper proposing changes to the act was published in 2021 following an independent review of the act by Simon Wessely.
Involuntary treatment refers to medical treatment undertaken without the consent of the person being treated. Involuntary treatment is permitted by law in some countries when overseen by the judiciary through court orders; other countries defer directly to the medical opinions of doctors.
The Mental Health Act is an Ontario law that regulates the administration of mental health care in the province. The main purpose of the legislation is to regulate the involuntary admission of people into a psychiatric hospital. Since the changes brought about in 2000 under Bill 68, the Act allows for a community treatment order by the attending physician. This order is intended to provide comprehensive treatment outside of a psychiatric facility.
The State Hospital is a psychiatric hospital in the village of Carstairs, in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. It provides care and treatment in conditions of high security for patients from Scotland and Northern Ireland. The hospital is managed by the State Hospitals Board for Scotland which is a public body accountable to the First Minister of Scotland through the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates. It is a Special Health Board, part of the NHS Scotland and the only hospital of its kind within Scotland.
The Internal Security Act 1960 (ISA) of Singapore is a statute that grants the executive power to enforce preventive detention, prevent subversion, suppress organized violence against persons and property, and do other things incidental to the internal security of Singapore. The present Act was originally enacted by the Parliament of Malaysia as the Internal Security Act 1960, and extended to Singapore on 16 September 1963 when Singapore was a state of the Federation of Malaysia.
The role of approved mental health professional (AMHP) in the United Kingdom was created in the 2007 amendment of the Mental Health Act 1983 to replace the role of approved social worker (ASW). The role is broadly similar to the role of the approved social worker but is distinguished in no longer being the exclusive preserve of social workers. It can be undertaken by other professionals including registered mental health or learning disability nurses, occupational therapists and chartered psychologists after completing appropriate post-qualifying masters level training at level 7 NQF and being approved by a local authority for a period of up to five years, subject to re-warranting. The role of the AMHP is to coordinate the assessment of individuals who are being considered for detention under the Mental Health Act 1983. The reason why some specialist mental health professionals are eligible to undertake this role is broadly to avoid excessive medicalisation of the assessment and treatment for individuals living with a mental disorder, as defined by section 1 of the Mental Health Act 1983. It is the role of the AMHP to decide, founded on the medical recommendations of doctors, whether a person should be detained under the Mental Health Act 1983.
Political abuse of psychiatry, also commonly referred to as punitive psychiatry, is the misuse of psychiatry, including diagnosis, detention, and treatment, for the purposes of obstructing the human rights of individuals and/or groups in a society. In other words, abuse of psychiatry is the deliberate action of having citizens psychiatrically diagnosed who need neither psychiatric restraint nor psychiatric treatment. Psychiatrists have been involved in human rights abuses in states across the world when the definitions of mental disease were expanded to include political disobedience. As scholars have long argued, governmental and medical institutions code menaces to authority as mental diseases during political disturbances. Nowadays, in many countries, political prisoners are sometimes confined and abused in psychiatric hospitals.
The Fixated Threat Assessment Centre (FTAC) is a UK police/mental health unit, whose function is to manage the risk to public figures from stalkers and individuals who are fixated on high profile public figures or prominent protected sites. It was formed in 2006 in acknowledgement that perpetrators of attacks and other unwanted incidents overwhelmingly suffered from psychosis, and could often be identified in advance of any incidents from precursor behavioural signs. Preventive treatment could then be applied, for the protection of the relevant public figures as well as the families and neighbours of the sufferer.
In R v Bournewood Community and Mental Health NHS Trust the House of Lords ruled that a man who had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital without capable consent had not been unlawfully detained under the common law. A later European Court of Human Rights ruling, however, found that the man had been unlawfully deprived of his liberty in the meaning of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In the case HL v United Kingdom (45508/99) the European Court of Human Rights found that the informal admission to a psychiatric hospital of a compliant but incapacitated adult was in contravention of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The court found that the distinction between actual and potential detention relied upon by the UK House of Lords in their ruling that HL had not been detained in R v Bournewood Community and Mental Health NHS Trust was not of central importance under Article 5. The European Court also held that the practice of informal admission of compliant but incapacitated adults who were de facto detained was not 'in accordance with a procedure described by law' and thus was not lawful under the Convention.
This disability rights timeline lists events outside the United States relating to the civil rights of people with disabilities, including court decisions, the passage of legislation, activists' actions, significant abuses of people with disabilities, and the founding of various organizations. Although the disability rights movement itself began in the 1960s, advocacy for the rights of people with disabilities started much earlier and continues to the present.
Mental health in Russia is covered by a law, known under its official name—the Law of the Russian Federation "On Psychiatric Care and Guarantees of Citizens' Rights during Its Provision", which is the basic legal act that regulates psychiatric care in the Russian Federation and applies not only to persons with mental disorders but all citizens. A notable exception of this rule is those vested with parliamentary or judicial immunity. Providing psychiatric care is regulated by a special law regarding guarantees of citizens' rights.
AH vs West London Mental Health Trust was a landmark case in England, which established a legal precedent in 2011 when Albert Laszlo Haines (AH), a patient in Broadmoor Hospital, a high security psychiatric hospital, was able to exercise a right to a fully open a public mental health review tribunal to hear his appeal for release. The case and the legal principles it affirmed have been described as opening up the secret world of tribunals and National Health Service secure units, and as having substantial ramifications for mental health professionals and solicitors, though how frequently patients will be willing or able to exercise the right is not yet clear.
A mental health tribunal is a specialist tribunal (hearing) empowered by law to adjudicate disputes about mental health treatment and detention, primarily by conducting independent reviews of patients diagnosed with mental disorders who are detained in psychiatric hospitals, or under outpatient commitment, and who may be subject to involuntary treatment.
Commander Christine Jones QPM is a senior British police officer serving with London's Metropolitan Police Service. As of 2014, she is the Met's senior officer responsible for mental health and for domestic violence; she also the leads the Association of Chief Police Officers' (ACPO) National Mental Health Working Group.
Involuntary commitment or civil commitment is a legal process through which an individual who is deemed by a qualified agent to have symptoms of severe mental disorder is detained in a psychiatric hospital (inpatient) where they can be treated involuntarily.
The Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 (PSA) is a preventive detention law under which a person is taken into custody to prevent them from acting harmfully against "the security of the state or the maintenance of the public order" in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Whereas PSA applies only to Jammu and Kashmir, it is very similar to the National Security Act that is used by the central and other state governments of India for preventive detention.