Abstract
The Mental Health Act 2001 was formally enacted by the Irish Houses of Oireachtas (parliament) on 8 July 2001 and implemented in full on 1 November 2006. The Mental Health Act 2001 replaces and updates a number of older pieces of legislation, including the Mental Treatment Act 1945. The purpose of this paper is to outline the central provisions of the Mental Health Act 2001 as they relate to psychiatric practice in Ireland. This paper does not aim to examine the issues surrounding delays in the implementation of the Act; these issues are well explored elsewhere (Daly, 2005; Ganter, 2005; Lawlor, 2005; Owens, 2005).
Highlights
The Mental Health Act 2001 makes provision for the appointment of a ‘Mental Health Commission’ the principal functions of which are ‘to promote, encourage and foster the establishment and maintenance of high standards and good practices in the delivery of mental health services and to take all reasonable steps to protect the interests of persons detained in approved centres under this Act’
The Mental Health Act 2001 provides detailed guidelines in relation to ‘consent obtained freely without threats or inducements’ and specifies that ‘the consent of a patient shall be required for treatment except where, in the opinion of the consultant psychiatrist responsible for the care and treatment of the patient, the treatment is necessary to safeguard the life of the patient, to restore his or her health, to alleviate his or her condition, or to relieve his or her suffering, and by reason of his or her mental disorder the patient concerned is incapable of giving such consent’
If ‘medicine has been administered to a patient for the purposes of ameliorating his or her mental disorder for a continuous period of 3 months, the administration of that medication shall not be continued’ unless either: (a) the patient consents in writing, or (b) if the patient is ‘unable or unwilling’ to provide consent, the treatment is approved by the treating consultant psychiatrist and one other psychiatrist
Summary
The preliminary section of the Mental Health Act 2001 is primarily concerned with definitions. Mental illness is defined as ‘a state of mind of a person which affects the person’s thinking, perceiving, emotion or judgment and which seriously impairs the mental function of the person to the extent that he or she requires care or medical treatment in his or her own interest or in the interest of other persons’. Significant intellectual disability is defined as ‘a state of arrested or incomplete development of mind of a person which includes significant impairment of intelligence and social functioning and abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person’. For the purposes of the Act, a child is defined as ‘a person under the age of 18 years other than a person who is or has been married.’. For the purposes of making an application for involuntary admission, the term spouse ‘does not include a spouse of a person who is living separately and apart from the person or in respect of whom an application or order has been made under the Domestic Violence Act 1996’
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