ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the family members’ status in the stage of discharge in medical practice and the courts’ responses. It begins with an overall description of both voluntary and involuntary procedures, and provides a rough overview of the general differences. Most involuntary service users are taken by their family members, which are also confirmed by an official training textbook of the Mental Health law. The chapter suggests how the treatment is administered and analyses the judicial response. It examines the determinations of the diagnostic threshold in practice and the courts’ response to the psychiatric discretion. In a number of cases in which service users challenged the lawfulness of their detention for treatment, the courts invoked Article 28, which is only about admission and detention for diagnostic assessment, to justify the detention for treatment. The exploration of different stages of decision-making partly explains why the change from the ‘law in the book’ to the ‘law in action’ is so difficult.
