The revised Mental Health Bill 2006 was published on 17 November. It makes 7 main changes to the Mental Health Act 1983 and also introduces ‘Bournewood’ safeguards into the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
The main aims of the Bill are to:
- help ensure that people with serious mental disorders can be required, where necessary, to receive the treatment they need to protect them and the public from harm
- bring mental health legislation into line with modern service provision
- strengthen patient safeguards and tackle human rights incompatibilities
What changes does the Bill make?
The Bill introduces a new, simplified
definition of mental disorder to make the Act
easier to use. The new definition is simply “any
disorder or disability of the mind”. It does not
change what is covered by the definition, but is
much less complicated.
What does it say about alcohol?
The Bill retains the exclusion for
dependence on alcohol and drugs to make
clear that the Act is not (and never has been) to
be used to force people who are suffering from
no other mental disorder to accept treatment for
substance dependence. The exclusion has,
however, been reworded to make it even clearer
that people who are dependent on alcohol and
drugs are not excluded from the scope of the
Act if they also suffer from another mental
disorder (even if that other disorder is related to
their alcohol or drug use.)
The exclusion does not extend to substance misuse (as opposed to dependence) because misuse by itself is not a mental disorder and so the Bill does not need to say it is excluded.
Further info
- Department of Health press release
- Department of Health briefings on key policy areas of the bill
- Mental Health Alliance press release Mental Health Bill still not fit for the twenty-first century
- Why Rethink opposes the bill
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