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Proportionality of legal discrimination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Partha Gangopadhyay
Partha Gangopadhyay*
Affiliation:
Forensic Psychiatry, University of Aberdeen, UK, email [email protected]
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Sir: The article by Zigmond (2009) made for interesting reading. Mental health law is about balancing the need to detain people in order to protect them or other people from harm and the need to respect people's human rights and autonomy. In the UK, there was much concern during the development of recent mental health legislation, in particular the Mental Capacity Act 2005, that the government had got this balance wrong. Many of these concerns have been addressed in the updated Code of Practice to the 1983 Mental Health Act, which is an essential guide to practising under the Act (Department of Health, 2008). There is no legal duty to comply with the Code, but professionals must have regard to it and record the reason for any departure from the guidance (which can be subject to legal challenge).

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Correspondence
Information
International Psychiatry , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 24
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 © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2010

References

Bindman, J., Maingay, S. & Szmukler, G. (2003) The Human Rights Act and mental health legislation. British Journal of Psychiatry, 182, 91–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Department of Health (2008) Code of Practice, Mental Health Act 1983. TSO (The Stationery Office).Google Scholar
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Szmukler, G. & Holloway, F. (2000) Reform of the Mental Health Act: health or safety? British Journal of Psychiatry, 177, 196–200.Google Scholar
Zigmond, T. (2009) Mental illness and legal discrimination. International Psychiatry, 6, 79–80.Google Scholar
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