New Mental Health Bill Criticised

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31678, 14 May 1968, Page 22

New Mental Health Bill Criticised

Disappointment that the new Mental Health Bill retains the status of committed patient is expressed In an editorial in the “New Zealand Medical Journal.” The Bill is termed an important overhaul of the legislation, and a serious effort to bring the legislative structure into line with current psychiatric practice. "Particularly important is the abandonment of the oldfashioned classification of mental patients with the implicit equation of the mentally subnormal with the mentally ill,” the journal states. Although there were a number of definitions in the Bill, “one cannot help feeling a little disappointment that the opportunity was not taken of more radical reconsideration of the legislative structure," the journal states. It accepts a need for powers of compulsory treatment

where a person, by reason of his illness, is a danger to himself or others, and unaware of his need for treatment. “This does not in 1968 necessarily imply a status, but the new Bill retains the status of committed patient,” the journal states.

“This is fortified by the retention of the Magistrate's order. The Magistrate cannot and should not be used as a shield from responsibility for what is essentially a medical question. “Confidence in our public psychiatric services is engendered by confidence in those who staff them, and the view of a Magistrate who ‘examines’ a patient should be irrelevant.

“Once upon a time a Magistrate’s order was the patient’s protection; now his protection is the skill and experience of a professional psychiatrist Could not this now be .recognised?”