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Mental Health Guardianship—a Change for the Better?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Gareth W. Hughes
Gareth W. Hughes*
Affiliation:
Cefn Coed Hospital, Swansea
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The 1959 Mental Health Act has provided the legal framework for psychiatric practice in the UK for the past two decades. The Mental Health (Amendment) Bill (DHSS, 1981) currently before Parliament proposes to update the Act by improving the safeguards for detained patients, clarifying the position of staff looking after them, and by the removal of uncertainties in the law. The Bill incorporates changes relating to the compulsory care of Mentally Disordered patients in the community whereby a person may be accepted into Guardianship on the grounds that he or she is suffering from a Mental Disorder. Once accepted into Guardianship, the person or body named as Guardian has the power to exercise control over the person as if he or they were the father of the patient, and the patient was under 14 years of age.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists , Volume 6 , Issue 10 , October 1982 , pp. 176 - 177
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1982

References

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