News archive Report: A Human Rights Analysis of the Draft Heads of a Bill to Amend the Mental Health Act 2001

Dr Charles O’Mahony (Lecturer in Law) and Dr Fiona Morrissey (Adjunct Lecturer in Law) have published a Report for the Non-Governmental Organisation Mental Health Reform.  The Report is titled “A Human Rights Analysis of the Draft Heads of a Bill to Amend the Mental Health Act 2001”.  In the Report Dr O’Mahony and Dr Morrissey provide legal analysis on the recently published Heads of Bill, which proposes significant changes to the 2001 Act.  Based on their analysis of the Heads of Bill, the authors make several recommendations, which are aimed at strengthening respect for the human rights of persons subject to the legislation.  

The Report sets out comprehensively the relevant regional and international human rights law and they used this body of law as a framework for analysing the Heads of Bill.   Their Report addresses several key areas, which include:

• Part 8 on Children, the new guiding principles, 
• the definition of “mental disorder”, 
• the voluntary category, the intermediate category, the involuntary category, and allied issues.  
• A number of other key provisions will be examined such as ending the use of coercion, 
• The need for independent advocacy and the complaints mechanism for persons under the 2001 Act.  

 The Report is available here https://www.mentalhealthreform.ie/campaigns/reform-the-mental-health-act/