Mental health law is a rapidly evolving area of practice and research, with growing global dimensions. This work reflects the increasing importance of this field, critically discussing key issues of controversy and debate, and providing up-to-date analysis of cutting-edge developments in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Australia. This is a timely moment for this book to appear. The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) sought to transform the landscape in which mental health law is developed and implemented. This Convention, along with other developments, has, to varying degrees, informed sweeping legislative reforms in many countries around the world. These and other developments are discussed here. Contributors come from a wide range of countries and a variety of academic backgrounds including ethics, law, philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology. Some contributions are also informed by lived experience, whether in person or as family members. The result is a rich, polyphonic, and sometimes discordant, account of what mental health law is and what it might be. The Handbook is aimed at mental health scholars and practitioners as well as students of law, human rights, disability studies, and psychiatry, and campaigners and law- and policy-makers.

The Irish health system is confronted by a range of challenges, both emerging and recurring. This collection provides a foundation for ongoing engagement with selected issues in contemporary Irish health contexts. It includes contributions from scholars and practitioners across a range of disciplines. The essays are theoretically informed and are grounded in the realities of the Irish health system, by drawing on contributors' contextual knowledge. The focus of the collection is interdisciplinary and the essays are situated at the intersection between ethics, law, medicine and policy. It draws out the interlinking themes of context and care, rights and responsibilities, regulating research and oversight of decision-making. This book makes an informed and balanced contribution to academic and broader public discourse. It will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students in ethics, law and health and those outside the academic sphere who must engage critically with the issues addressed. -- .

This collection brings together leading international socio-legal and medico-legal scholars to explore the dilemma of how to support legal capacity in theory and practice. Traditionally, decisions for persons found to lack capacity are made by others, generally without reference to the person, and this applies especially to those with cognitive and psycho-social disabilities. This book examines the difficulties in establishing effective and deliverable supported decision-making, concluding that approaches to capacity need to be informed by a grounded understanding of how it operates in 'real life' contexts. The book focuses on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which recognises the equal right to legal capacity of people with disabilities and requires States Parties to provide support for the exercise of this right. However, 10 years after the CRPD came into force, the shift to legal frameworks for supported decision-making remains at best only partial. With 16 chapters written by contributors from the UK, Canada, Finland, India, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey, the collection takes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach. Many of the contributors have been directly involved in law reform processes in their home jurisdictions, and thus can combine both academic expertise and practical, grounded awareness of the challenges of legal change.

This collection brings together leading international socio-legal and medico-legal scholars to explore the dilemma of how to support legal capacity in theory and practice. Traditionally, decisions for persons found to lack capacity are made by others, generally without reference to the person, and this applies especially to those with cognitive and psycho-social disabilities. This book examines the difficulties in establishing effective and deliverable supported decision-making, concluding that approaches to capacity need to be informed by a grounded understanding of how it operates in ‘real life’ contexts. The book focuses on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which recognises the equal right to legal capacity of people with disabilities and requires States Parties to provide support for the exercise of this right. However, 10 years after the CRPD came into force, the shift to legal frameworks for supported decision-making remains at best only partial. With 16 chapters written by contributors from the UK, Canada, Finland, India, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey, the collection takes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach. Many of the contributors have been directly involved in law reform processes in their home jurisdictions, and thus can combine both academic expertise and practical, grounded awareness of the challenges of legal change.

This analysis of the law's approach to healthcare decision-making critiques its liberal foundations in respect of three categories of people: adults with capacity, adults without capacity and adults who are subject to mental health legislation. Focusing primarily on the law in England and Wales, the analysis also draws on the law in the United States, legal positions in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Scotland and on the human rights protections provided by the ECHR and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Having identified the limitations of a legal view of autonomy as primarily a principle of non-interference, Mary Donnelly questions the effectiveness of capacity as a gatekeeper for the right of autonomy and advocates both an increased role for human rights in developing the conceptual basis for the law and the grounding of future legal developments in a close empirical interrogation of the law in practice.

This analysis of the law's approach to healthcare decision-making critiques its liberal foundations in respect of three categories of people: adults with capacity, adults without capacity and adults who are subject to mental health legislation. Focusing primarily on the law in England and Wales, the analysis also draws on the law in the United States, legal positions in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Scotland and on the human rights protections provided by the ECHR and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Having identified the limitations of a legal view of autonomy as primarily a principle of non-interference, Mary Donnelly questions the effectiveness of capacity as a gatekeeper for the right of autonomy and advocates both an increased role for human rights in developing the conceptual basis for the law and the grounding of future legal developments in a close empirical interrogation of the law in practice.

The traditional Hippocratic Oath sworn by generations of doctors requires the physician to "prescribe regimen for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgement and never do harm to anyone." The patient's views as to what constituted her "good" did not have to be canvassed. Like many hitherto unexamined aspects of Irish society, the relationship between doctor and patient has been re-evaluated in recent years. In theory, at least, we now live in a society where the patient, and not the doctor, knows best, where an individual's consent is a fundamental prerequisite for any medical procedure. Yet, in spite of the importance afforded to consent by legal, ethical, and medical commentators, the reality is that genuine and informed consent to medical procedures is often absent. Many patients, either by choice or because they have no alternative, still leave the responsibility for health-care decisions in the hands of physicians.This book looks at the requirement for consent to medical procedures. It considers how this requirement has assumed the important position it now holds and examines the way in which the requirement is given legal force. It asks why Ireland's health-care system operates in a way that fails to deliver genuine and informed consent and why the legal system fails to make it do so. The book also questions whether the focus on consent creates an unnecessary distance in the relationship between physician and patient. It argues that a revision of existing legal frameworks is important in order to protect patients' rights and suggests a solution. However, it also argues that the law is a limited tool which can never fully take account of the complexities of thedoctor-patient relationship, and that a more effective means of ensuring greater patient participation in health-care decision-making is needed.