Are the Rights of the Mentally Ill Adequately Protected by Current Essay

Are the Rights of the Mentally Ill Adequately Protected by Current Mental Health Law - Essay Example The Law’s feature Mental Health Law of 2007 amended the MHL 1983, the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005. The amendments introduced major changes relating to the intervention, treatment of patient, and technical definitions, and some ethical considerations e.g. undergoing treatment without the patient’s consent (MHL, 2011; Department of Health and Ministry of Justice, 2011). Other crucial changes in the provisions broaden the professional roles of medical practitioners and other attendants, as well as, accord the patient’s family to seek legal remedies based on just cause (The National Archives, 2011). The law also introduced supervised community treatment (SCT), some safeguards which include age-segregation of patient to favor mentally-challenged youths and children to ascertain that they’d not be integrated in an environment which could deteriorate or aggravate their condition (MHL, 2011; DoH & MoJ, 2011). The amended law also empowered the national government to assume accountability to assist initiatives for independent mental health advocacy (MHL, 2011; DoH & MoJ, 2011). ... Such meant that those who are severely victimized by sexual assaults and violence which has consequential negative or adverse psychological impacts (MHL, 2011; DoH & MoJ, 2011). MHL of 2007 likewise provided the victim such right to be inform about patients’ discharged and it’s anent right for representation. Law not enough? While the amendment have successfully improved the mental health protection services for the patients by vesting more accountability for all medical professionals, but most of these are policy-based which pressed for mandatory roles of medical practitioners in providing appropriate care and services to clients, as well as, some procedural mechanisms that are supposedly inherent in the medical practice. Such simply focused on escalating performance management in mental health facilities and about administering support service for the patients. The larger issue of mental health care is basically improving resource allocation to improve the facilities to meet the goals of better mental health care in these utilities’ operation in response to the problems on mental disorders in all social strata, especially those underprivileged to access these health facilities. While there is effort to improve the intervention on neurological disorders, there remained a challenge about how to increase the services to treat schizophrenia, epilepsy, chronic depression amid scarcity of resources. Such must also facilitate increase research studies on causes of mental disorder that are socially-created which result to mental distress and insanity. These studies must aim to address decrease of disorder prevalence. Thus, it is understandable that authorities should be translating these policies into concrete agenda with