Government may detain opponents by labeling them "crazy"

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Tuesday July 17, 2007

Rights groups fear that the UK authorities will abuse the new Mental Health Act to detain people against their will just because they are perceived as awkward or because their religious or cultural beliefs are not regarded as acceptable by the government of the day, Britain's premier medical journal Lancet reported today.

The revised bill, which became law on 4 July this year, introduced community treatment orders (CTOs), which allows the government powers to force people with a history of mental illness to forcibly treated.

But patients' rights groups have pointed out that the government could use these powers to commit human-rights abuses, especially if CTOs are issued too widely.

Human Rights Lawyers have cast doubts about the bill's compliance with the Human Rights Act.

"In particular the Bill fails to provide for exclusions from the wide definition of mental disorder and fails to restrict the imposition of community treatment orders to a small and tightly defined group of patients - and is likely to be challenged under the Human Rights Act", Fiona Woolf, Law Society President, said. "The Law Society will continue to campaign for a new Mental Health Act that is both humane and effective."

The bill was also criticised as a missed opportunity to to achieve a modern and humane new Mental Health Act.

"It has failed to heed the evidence about the risks of significant over-use of community treatment orders and the excessive powers the Bill gives to clinicians," Andy Bell of the Mental Health Alliance said. "And it treats people with mental health problems as second class citizens by allowing treatment to be imposed on those who are able to make rational decisions for themselves."

Minority groups have also voiced their concerns that CTOs will be used to discriminate against them.

"The law already disproportionately impacts people from black and minority ethnic communities," Marcel Vige, chair of the National Black and Minority Ethnic Mental Health Network, said. "We are disappointed that the Government has chosen to press ahead with the Bill in its current form despite evidence that it is likely to make the situation far worse. The Commission for Racial Equality has stated unequivocally its belief that the Government has failed in its duty to properly assess the degree to which the legislation will have differential impacts on different ethnic groups."

But the government's mental health czar criticised the opponents of the bill.

“That was never the intention, but that suspicion ran deep and it was not helped by the people who ran the campaign against the Bill who kept accusing the government of having these devious motives”, Louis Appleby said.