Scottish Mental Health Law Review
Final Report - now published
The final report of the Scottish Mental Health Law Review represents the product of over three years work in the first major review of mental health and capacity law in Scotland in over 20 years. It includes direct quotes from many of the voices of lived experience (including unpaid carers) as well as practitioners and relevant groups and organisations.
Contributors have helped us to develop a new, positive vision of our mental health law with three key aspects:
strengthening the voice of people who use services reducing the need for coercion in the system giving effect to all people’s rights, including economic and social rights.
Our recommendations will bring Scotland in line with thinking and practice internationally as assessed against developing human rights standards, like the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
It will take some time to fully implement our recommendations. We have therefore separated them into short, medium and long term.
There are excellent practitioners and good practice in some areas already. This can be expanded. Addressing stigma and culture change can also begin at once.
Some recommendations will depend on greater resources and an increase in the number of mental health practitioners. Co-ordination will be required within government to address some areas that cut across different departments. This will not be easy but is consistent with the developing picture
in Scotland of human rights for everyone which should be clarified in the Scottish Government’s forthcoming Human Rights Bill.
John Scott (Chair) , Karen Martin and Graham Morgan (Vice-Chairs), Alison Rankin, Jill Stavert and Colin McKay
Please note that the Review has now concluded its work and the final report has been presented to Scottish Government for consideration. The secretariat will no longer be dealing with enquiries, all future enquiries should be directed to: MentalHealthLaw@gov.scot
The results to our final consultation have now been published and can be viewed here
The results to our final consultation on additional proposals can be viewed here