Legal changes deemed a must to protect mental health patients

The law needed to be changed to safeguard the rights of people with mental health problems, Richmond Foundation CEO Dolores Gauci said.

She criticised the policy whereby compulsory emergency admission to a mental hospital only required an application by the next of kin, or the mental welfare officer, and a medical recommendation by any doctor, a referral which remains in force 72 hours.

“You don’t have to be in hospital for 72 hours as an emergency measure. Twenty-four or 48 hours maximum is enough,” Ms Gauci said. “It is up to the consultant to see whether the time is enough but I have known people to be in hospital for up to a week before a consultant would have seen them,” she continued.

Compulsory admission to hospital which, as the term implies, is obligatory for patients needing treatment for their mental illness, can be done by one of three orders: an emergency order, an observation order or a treatment order.

Emergency orders expire after 72 hours and a patient would require an application by the next of kin, the mental welfare officer or a medical recommendation by any doctor to be admitted.

Observation orders remain in force for 28 days and require an additional medical recommendation with one of these having to be by a psychiatrist. Treatment orders, which last for a year, also need two medical recommendations and an application by the mental officer and the next of kin.

“I’m not saying the actual admission is necessarily a violation of rights. But, in this day and age, people do not need to stay in hospital for one year on the strength of a treatment order,” Ms Gauci said. She feels the duration of the orders should be reduced in all three instances, which are used to admit patients, even against their will.

The NGO, which helps about 200 mental health sufferers through various projects, has started a petition to get the ball rolling. According to Ms Gauci the issue of amending the Mental Health Act has been going on for too long.

“The draft I last saw envisaged that there will be a commissioner who will look at all compulsory admissions to see if they needed to be compulsorily admitted or not. There you already have the major human right being safeguarded,” Ms Gauci said.

The law is not the only thing the NGO would like to be changed. “I think with the Mental Health Act changing, people with mental health problems would have their rights respected far more,” Ms Gauci said.

The NGO also has another petition on the employment of mental health patients and is pushing for a change in the Schedule V card, which grants free medication to people who suffer from chronic diseases.

As things stand, Ms Gauci said, only people diagnosed with schizophrenia are entitled to free medications. Many other chronic illnesses existed, Ms Gauci said, like obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder and chronic depression, and people who have such illnesses, just like people who suffer from other chronic physical ailments, such as diabetes or hypertension, needed to be provided with medication.

“Life is tough enough for them because of the illness without them also having to fork out money,” she said.