Something important about the amendments to the Mental Health Act 1983 (a rant)

In 2007 the Mental Health Act was amended. It was a terrible amendment.
It made for a more coercive, more clearly social control rather than
health care medico-legal tool.

A lot of the information here is from this paper:
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/180/2/110
Kendell, R. 2002, The distinction between personality disorder and
mental illness, British Journal of Psychiatry

One of the key areas was the change of the definition of what mental
disorders the act covered. It broadened the definition to cover
personality disorders. These are not considered to be true mental
illnesses because they are not thought to be caused by biological
problems. Historically the UK's political, legal and medical systems had
differentiated between mental illnesses and psychopathic disorders. This
changed in 2007.

This is highly significant. The prevailing reason for the many coercive
changes was the fear of the mentally ill. The legislation allowed for
the compulsory and indefinite incaceration of people with a 'dangerous
severe personality disorder' whether or not they had been convicted of a
serious criminal offence. The amendments also removed the need for
treatment so made no distinction between incaceration for crime and
supposed healthcare.

This means in the UK a person can be treated like a criminal without
having committed a crime. They can be imprisoned without jury or judge
because it doesn't matter. They've not committed a serious crime. Yet
they can have their liberty taken away, their rights and everything else
that mental healthcare can take from a person. The system doesn't even
have to offer them treatment.

They also introduced another coercive tool. Supervised Community
Treatrment and/or the Community Treatment Order. Again, this is based on
the fear of people with a severe mental illness. I think it was
introduced to lower the homicide by persons with a mental illness rate.
Through the work of organisations like the Zito Trust the idea of the
scary, axe-wielding psycho (which included people with a diagnosis of
schizophrenia) to the public and politicians. This sort of pre-crime
system was set up to keep people on medication. It is a sort of
psychiatric parole also justified by the 'problem' of revolving doors
patients who often are rehospitalised frequently when they come off
medication. Patients are placed under a legal order to continue to take
medication when they leave hospital and if they stop the amended Mental
Health Act means they can be summarily dragged back into hospital.

What's perhaps most frightening about the introduction of these legal
changes is how they are used in practice. The CTO has been overused
1000% more than was predicted. it has become a convenient tool for
psychiatrists to force treatment on patients in the community. The
broadening of the definition could lead to other social control aspects
of mental health to later on become things that can be used to
incacerate people. Unmarried mothers could be incacerated in the mental
health system in the UK in the mid-20th century. Black men are already
sectioned more often, given diagnoses of schizophrenia more often and
also over-represented in the use of the CTO.

There is no way a system of pre-crime - incaceration in case a person
commits a crime - can be justified as human or ethical at the start of
the new millennium. It is a step backward. The broading of the
definition goes outside the idea of what is a true, biological illness
and into social and behavioural control. These are the sort of cahanges
that are so dangerous but the public and the politicians can't see the
ill they are doing. They are removing basic freedoms and human rights
from people. These are done as punishment for the worst crimes. They are
also effected on human beings who've committed no crime through modern
psychiatry and the amended Mental Health Act 1983.