The rights of psychiatric patients in the light of the principles announced by the United Nations: A recognition of the right to consent to treatment?☆

This project investigates patients' and practitioners' experiences and understandings of the consent process, as it is governed by the Mental Health Act in Great Britain.

We aim to illuminate our respondents' experiences of the consent process, and to explore their attempts to make sense of that process.

Semi-structured interviews with 5 Responsible Medical Officers, and 7 of their consenting adult patients, were conducted at a medium-secure psychiatric hospital. We approached the analysis from the perspective of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.

Our analysis begins with an account of some of the common phenomenological consequences of the consent process as our participants understand them, but then moves on to discuss some of the contextual constraints which are evident from their negotiation of these understandings.

We conclude by outlining a number of emergent issues relevant to the current development of new Mental Health legislation. These include: mechanisms to allow collaboration with user groups; a more consultative role for users in their own treatment decisions; formal training and support for those conducting competency assessments; and more flexible and transparent legislative frameworks.

Since the introduction of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) (CRPD), there have been calls to establish standards to measure compliance of domestic mental health laws with the human rights outlined in the CRPD. This article aims to address this gap by proposing a tool: the Analysis Instrument for Mental health (AIM). In particular, the tool's purpose is to enable states and civil society to assess the compliance of non-forensic domestic mental health laws with Article 12 of the CRPD. It responds to Dawson's (2015) call for a mechanism designed to provide clear and measurable standards for which to undertake this exercise. The content of AIM draws directly from the authoritative interpretation of Article 12 provided by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the Committee) in its General Comment, as well as the substantial body of academic and other literature about Article 12.