ABSTRACT
Just 10 years after the passing of the 1983 Mental Health Act, the Mental Health Act Commission, in its Fifth Biennial Report, was urging that “a full review of the 1983 Act is now needed.” Again, in its Seventh Report, the Commission pointed to increasing difficulties in the application and interpretation of parts of the legislation, which did not correspond to how services were being delivered. Mental health services were changing from being primarily hospital based to more of a community focus and these changes were not reflected in the legislative framework. The Mental Health Act 1983, the origins of which lay in the 1959 Act, was essentially about hospital treatment and had become out of date.
