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Judicial involuntary admission under the Mental Health Act in Goa, India: profile, outcome and implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Anil Rane
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Goa, India, email [email protected]
Abhijit Nadkarni
Affiliation:
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
Shilpa Waikar
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Goa, India
H. A. Borker
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Goa, India
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Abstract

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Reception order (RO) by a magistrate is a mode of involuntary admission provided under the Indian Mental Health Act of 1987. To the best of our knowledge there has been no evaluation of this provision in clinical practice. The present paper is a descriptive study through retrospective case-note review of patients admitted by way of RO to a tertiary care hospital in Goa. Compared with those admitted voluntarily, those admitted by RO tended to be single, middle aged (40–60 years old) and non-Goan; on average they had a significantly longer hospital stay than voluntarily admitted patients. Non-affective psychosis and substance use disorders were the more common diagnoses. While admissions by RO serve a useful role in bringing patients who are not under proper care into the mental healthcare system, they do not address the issue of aftercare.

Type
Research papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 2012

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