Medicolegal: Compulsory treatment in the community for the mentally ill?

Abstract

In recent years many psychiatric patients who would formerly have been detained in mental hospitals have been released into the community. At the same time more effective drug treatments to control acute psychotic disorders, particularly schizophrenia, have become available. Psychiatrists may give treatment without patients' consent if the patients are detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act 1983, but once patients have been released from hospital psychiatrists have no power to treat them without their consent. The result is a cycle in which patients are admitted to hospital and are released when their illness improves, only to relapse, often with great distress to those caring for them, and be admitted to hospital to be treated again. © 1987, British Medical Journal Publishing Group. All rights reserved.