Book Review: Mental Health Law: Policy and Practice
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/13619322200100008 |
| Published date | 01 March 2001 |
| Date | 01 March 2001 |
| Pages | 26-27 |
| Author | William Bingley |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
Book Rev i ew
Mental Health Law: Policy and Practice
By Peter Bartlett and Ralph Sandland
London: Blackstone Press (2000)
his is a long, complex and demand-
ing book that repays many times over those who,
with persistence, read all of its 447 pages.
A l t e rn a t i v e l y, it is set out in such a way that a rather
m o re selective dip into a discre te subject area is
made easy and re w a rd i n g .
B a rtlett and Sandland take th e view that mental
health law cannot be studied in a vacuum: indeed
they suggest that perhaps more than any other area of
law ‘it would be almost imm oral to divorce the study
of mental health law fro m the social situation of the
people directly involved’.
Mental Health Law: Policy a nd Practice s t a rted life
at the conceptual stage as a text for the authors’
students at the University of No ttingham. In re a l i s-
ing that objective, they have provided a book that
will take its place alo ngside those of Brenda Hoggett,
Anselm Eldergill and Richard Jone s as an essential
p a rt of the armamentarium of any body seriously
i n t e rested in this important a nd riveting subject.
The first three chapters di scuss some of the ‘big
issues’ that lie at the c ore of mental health law and
commence with a recent review o f what the authors
identify as a central paradox a t the heart of the s tudy
of mental health and il lness: the centrality of the
medical model and its i mposition of ‘a scientific ord e r
onto the profoundly un-ord e red world of the mad’.
‘All this,’ they assert ‘is a construction of the
reasoned, and re flects the wor ld of the reasoned; to
the insane person, it i s an alien landscape.’
S i m i l a r l y, mental health law, like psychiatry, is
also a language ‘of reas on about madness’ and
although at times law an d psychiatry are uneasy
bedfellows they are both ‘para digms of rationality in
their way, and thus each is faced with the sa me
p roblem: how to impose orde r onto madness; a re a l m
which would seem ex hypot hesi to be lacking ord e r, to
be irrational’. Foucaul t speaks loudly in these
debates and whether or not y ou are a fully signed up
member of his fan club, his insights (briefly and not
uncritically re f e rred to by the authors in the opening
Tchapter) provide an important part of the foundation
for the approach they take.
Examining the concept of men tal health law, the
p roblem of defining mental disorder and the contem-
p o r a ry mental health system provide the grist of the
opening three chapter s. In focusing on what some
might see to be the essentially non-legal (in the
strict, rather formal istic meaning of the word) content
of the opening section of M ental Health Law: Policy
and Practice, it is import ant to emphasise that this is a
book for lawyers and the law is entwined at every
point into these rather mor e discursive chapters that
set out clearly the conte xt of social issues an d pro f e s-
sional practice.
At the outset, the authors en gage with the alleged
b e n e ficiaries of all this eff o rt with a discussion
entitled ‘Who are the insan e?’. Quoting fro m
published accounts of the reality of mental il lness by
those who have experienc ed it, the significance of
the view of mental illness as intrinsic to sel f (for
many the alternative to the d isorder is ‘a void, a
nullity’) is highlighted and follows through to the
judicial acknowledgeme nt this received in B v
C roydon District Health A uthority (1994) 22 BMLR 13
(the High Court hearin g). Thorpe J re f e rred to the
relationship between the i ndividual and their person-
a l i t y. Citing an expert witness he asked: ‘Have we
the right to remove the on ly mechanism that re m a i n s
to her without the prospect of being able to h elp her
to cope in other ways? ’
The man-must-be-mad test re f e rred to by Lord
Justice Lawton in W v L [19 74] QB 711 re c e i v e s
rather more positive analys is than that provided by
B renda Hoggett, in a discu ssion about the ch allenges
posed to lawyers and others b y the failure to defin e
mental illness in the Mental Health Act. The autho rs
then go on to identify very clearly the fundamental
p roblem attached to using m edical terms as a basis
for determining the appli cation of legal interv e n t i o n .
While sympathetic to the me dical and pro f e s s i o n a l
objectives of classificati ons such as DSM-IV and
26 The Mental Health Review Volume 6 Issue 1 March 2001 © Pavilio n Pub lishin g (Bri ghton) 2001
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