This study, undertaken in 1997 and commissioned by the Department of Health, examines how Mental Health Review Tribunals make decisions about whether or not to discharge patients detained under sections 2 and 3 of the Mental Health Act (1983).

Second in a series of publications from the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Health Care in America project Today's health care providers have more research findings and more technology available to them than ever before. Yet recent reports have raised serious doubts about the quality of health care in America. Crossing the Quality Chasm makes an urgent call for fundamental change to close the quality gap. This book recommends a sweeping redesign of the American health care system and provides overarching principles for specific direction for policymakers, health care leaders, clinicians, regulators, purchasers, and others. In this comprehensive volume the committee offers: A set of performance expectations for the 21st century health care system. A set of 10 new rules to guide patient-clinician relationships. A suggested organizing framework to better align the incentives inherent in payment and accountability with improvements in quality. Key steps to promote evidence-based practice and strengthen clinical information systems. Analyzing health care organizations as complex systems, Crossing the Quality Chasm also documents the causes of the quality gap, identifies current practices that impede quality care, and explores how systems approaches can be used to implement change.

This publication highlights key issues and principles to be considered in the drafting, adoption and implementation of mental health legislation and best practice in mental health services. It contains examples of diverse experiences and practices, as well as extracts of laws and other legal documents from a range of different countries, and a checklist of key policy components. Three main elements of effective mental health legislation are identified, relating to context, content and process.

Each year, more than 33 million Americans receive health care for mental or substance-use conditions, or both. Together, mental and substance-use illnesses are the leading cause of death and disability for women, the highest for men ages 15-44, and the second highest for all men. Effective treatments exist, but services are frequently fragmented and, as with general health care, there are barriers that prevent many from receiving these treatments as designed or at all. The consequences of this are seriousâ€"for these individuals and their families; their employers and the workforce; for the nation's economy; as well as the education, welfare, and justice systems. Improving the Quality of Health Care for Mental and Substance-Use Conditions examines the distinctive characteristics of health care for mental and substance-use conditions, including payment, benefit coverage, and regulatory issues, as well as health care organization and delivery issues. This new volume in the Quality Chasm series puts forth an agenda for improving the quality of this care based on this analysis. Patients and their families, primary health care providers, specialty mental health and substance-use treatment providers, health care organizations, health plans, purchasers of group health care, and all involved in health care for mental and substanceâ€"use conditions will benefit from this guide to achieving better care.

This book provides an authoritative combination of legal and administrative practice and procedure and the operation of mental health tribunals (MHRTs). It includes: . Case summaries of all important reported and unreported decisions. Explanatory chapter on medical terms and the interpretation of special investigations. Diagnostic guidelines for the major forms of mental disorder. Detailed guidance on preparation of cases. Important amendments made by the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997

This book replaces the successful Controversies in Health Law. Under the same editorship and much the same authorship, it is substantially larger (30 chapters instead of 18) and correspondingly more comprehensive. It retains the lively analysis and the focus on controversial and cutting-edge problems. The chapters are broken up into parts covering Litigation and Liabilty; Reproductive Technologies; The Sequelae of the End of Life; Public Health; Ethical Frameworks and Dilemmas; Regulation; Human Rights and Therapeutic Jurisprudence; Research and Vulnerability and Information, Privacy and Confidentiality . They consider issues raised by new technologies, changing legislation and altering community expectations; by new regulatory processes for medicine and all of the health professions; by the fundamental changes to civil liability for medical negligence; by the fierce debate over the role of coroners. Disputes and Dilemmas in Health Law covers questions on property in human tissue and on the ethical and legal aspects of the genetics revolution; provides a modern take on "old" issues such as reproductive law; takes account of changes relating to expert evidence; and discusses how difficult cases in relation to psychiatric injury and wrongful life are pushing compensability to its edges.

In the field of mental health law,we entrust decisions with consequences of the utmost gravity – decisions about compulsory medical treatment and the loss of liberty – to doctors and approved social workers. Yet, how do these non-lawyers make decisions where the legitimacy of those decisions derives from law? This book examines the practical, ethical and legal terrain of duo-disciplinary decision-making: given identical cases, what dilemmas do psychiatrists and approved social workers encounter, do they reach the same or similar decisions and, most critically, how are those decisions justified? At a time of ferment in mental health law this book, through its narrative format, aids a better understanding of the dilemmas posed.