The 1983 Mental Health Act provides for some extraordinarily coercive powers. A person with acute mental illness can be detained without their consent and sometimes forcibly removed from their home for that purpose. This is necessary when someone poses a danger to themselves or others, but that imperative must always be applied with clinical sensitivity and regard for fundamental rights. Mental illness is not a criminal offence.
Too often, the boundary between medical intervention and arbitrary detention has been blurred. In 2017, Theresa May, then prime minister, established an independent review to consider why increasing numbers of people were being sectioned and why some groups were affected more than others. The most draconian powers were being disproportionately applied to black people – three times more likely to be detained than white people – and also patients with learning disabilities and autism. Prejudice, compounded by inadequate resourcing of mental health services, has engendered systemic injustice.
