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The working of the 1983 Mental Health Act: the experience of patients, relatives, psychiatrists, general practitioners and social workers involved in compulsory admission

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Lynne Webster
Affiliation:
University Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital of South Manchester, West Didsbury
Christine Dean
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham B15 2TH
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The 1983 Mental Health Act was introduced to increase the safeguards of the civil liberties of patients. One of the new provisions is that it is now the statutory responsibility of hospital managers to inform detained patients of their rights; this is done by giving them a leaflet explaining the appeal procedures. Doubt has been expressed (Dunlop, 1979) about whether this is an efficient means of conveying information to acutely ill patients.

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Articles
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, 1989

References

Bean, P. (1980) Compulsory Admissions to Mental Hospitals. Chichester: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Dunlop, J. L. (1979) Review of the Mental Health Act 1959. A doctor's point of view. Royal Society of Health Journal, 99, 213216.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Szmukler, G. (1983) The Mental Health (Amendment) Act 1982: will it make a difference? Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 7, 158160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webster, L., Dean, C. & Kessel, N. (1987) Effect of the 1983 Mental Health Act on the management of psychiatric patients. British Medical Journal, 295, 15291532.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
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