Mental Health Act 2007

These changes follow 9 years of debate and lobbying, with Rethink playing a campaigning role as a member of the Mental Health Alliance. If you wrote to your MP or a Minister, or came to a lobby of Parliament, your contribution will have made a difference too.

New rights and safeguards have been provided in the 2007 Mental Health Act and its Code of Practice:

• Right to advocacy – anyone detained (‘sectioned’) for more than 72 hours under the Mental Health Act 2007 will have the right to support from an advocate.
• Right to displace the Nearest Relative – the patient now has a right to apply to the court to displace their nearest relative if they are unsuitable.
• Purpose of treatment – a person can only be detained under the Mental Health Act 2007 for treatment which will help the illness (i.e. not just sedate the person).
• Community Treatment Orders –a person under a CTO will not be told how to behave. Conditions can only be put on a person under CTO if they will help them engage in treatment.
• Young People – children and adolescents will no longer be placed in adult psychiatric wards
• Electro Convulsive Therapy – People who have decision making capacity cannot be forced to have ECT, except in an emergency and agreed by a Second Opinion Doctor.
• Exclusions – the Code wills specify that the definition of mental disorder will not include sexual orientation, religious or cultural beliefs, disorderly conduct or drug use.
• Place of Safety – The Code will state that a police station is not an appropriate place of safety in normal practice.

Rethink is pleased with these amendments, which were only obtained through hard lobbying by the Mental Health Alliance. However, we are disappointed that several other measures were not provided. These include:

• Mental capacity – Ministers claimed it was not possible to detain only those with impaired decision making capacity, even though this happens in Scotland.
• Right to appeal – against conditions imposed by a Community Treatment Order.
• Second medical opinion for CTOs – it was not considered necessary to have the agreement of a second opinion doctor to place someone on a Community Treatment Order.
• Choice of Nearest Relative – Ministers claimed that a Nearest Relative nominated by the patient would be less likely to act in their best interests.
• Inclusion of advance decisions  - this was considered to be unnecessary in the Act itself. Advance decisions will be included in the Code of Practice, but this is not legally binding.
• A right to assessment