Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editors' preface
- Contributors
- The historical background: the past 25 years since the Mental Health Act of 1959
- The social and medical consequences of recent legal reforms of mental health law in the USA: the criminalization of mental disorder
- The recent Mental Health Act in the United Kingdom: issues and perspectives
- Medical and social consequences of the Italian Psychiatric Care Act of 1978
- Lessons for the future drawn from United States legislation and experience
- Recent developments in relation to mental health and the law in the Federal Republic of Germany
- Psychopathy and dangerousness
- Dangerousness in social perspective
- Psychiatric explanations as excuses
- Detention of patients: administrative problems facing Mental Health Review Tribunals
- Developments in forensic psychiatry services in the National Health Service
- The role of psychiatry in prisons and ‘the right to punishment’
- Human rights in mental health
- Changes in mental health legislation as indicators of changing values and policies
- The Danish experience: one model of psychiatric testimony to courts of law
- A postscript on the discussions at the Cambridge Conference on Society, Psychiatry and the Law
Editors' preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editors' preface
- Contributors
- The historical background: the past 25 years since the Mental Health Act of 1959
- The social and medical consequences of recent legal reforms of mental health law in the USA: the criminalization of mental disorder
- The recent Mental Health Act in the United Kingdom: issues and perspectives
- Medical and social consequences of the Italian Psychiatric Care Act of 1978
- Lessons for the future drawn from United States legislation and experience
- Recent developments in relation to mental health and the law in the Federal Republic of Germany
- Psychopathy and dangerousness
- Dangerousness in social perspective
- Psychiatric explanations as excuses
- Detention of patients: administrative problems facing Mental Health Review Tribunals
- Developments in forensic psychiatry services in the National Health Service
- The role of psychiatry in prisons and ‘the right to punishment’
- Human rights in mental health
- Changes in mental health legislation as indicators of changing values and policies
- The Danish experience: one model of psychiatric testimony to courts of law
- A postscript on the discussions at the Cambridge Conference on Society, Psychiatry and the Law
Summary
The past twenty-five years have seen rapid change in the manner in which the needs of those suffering from mental illness have been met, in the laws relating to their admission to psychiatric hospitals, and in the treatments administered.
The mid 1950s had been a period of high optimism generated by the introduction of effective new drugs for the treatment of the most serious forms of mental disorder, both in their acute phases and as part of prophylactic management aimed at reducing the chances of relapse. An atmosphere of positive endeavour and high aspiration permeated a large number of mental hospitals and led to the introduction of active programmes of social rehabilitation and resettlement for patients who had, in the past, been all too liable to become residents of such hospitals for years or for life. There was a burgeoning of scientific investigation into the causes and treatment of mental disorder. A group of British mental hospitals had played a pioneering role in these developments and the programmes of management, organization and rehabilitation they employed were emulated in many parts of the world. This movement found expression in the Mental Health Act of 1959 which implemented the main recommendations of the Percy Commission. For ten to fifteen years the Act was regarded as the most humane and imaginative piece of legislation enacted this century in relation to the mentally ill anywhere in the world.
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- Information
- Psychiatry, Human Rights and the Law , pp. vii - xPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1985