Description
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC New Medicalism and the Mental Health Act by Dr John Fanning
In 2007 the Mental Health Act (MHA) 2007 came into force in England. The Act reformed the MHA 1983 and reshaped the law governing the compulsory care/treatment of people suffering from mental disorders. Primarily driven by concerns about risk it sought to remove obstacles to civil commitment and to extend the law’s coercive reach into the community. On its introduction the 2007 Act was dismissed as a missed opportunity for radical rights-focused reform. Little attention has been paid to its impact in the years since.Published to coincide with its tenth anniversary this book offers a timely evaluation of mental health law and policy in England. It argues that the current MHA defies easy categorisation within the standard descriptive models such as ‘legalism’ ‘new legalism’ and ‘medicalism’. It makes the case for a new model – inew medicalism /i– to account for the 2007 Act’s enhancement of the exercise of discretion by mental health professionals to facilitate the management of situations of risk. It critically examines the problems inherent in civil commitment frameworks organised around the concept of risk explores the theoretical foundations of new medicalism considers the challenges facing proponents of future reform and reflects on the 2007 Act’s practical impact.