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Treading a tightrope: Professional perspectives on balancing the rights of patient's and relative's under the Mental Health Act in England

Dixon, Jeremy; Stone, Kevin; Wilkinson-Tough, Megan; Laing, Judy

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Authors

Jeremy Dixon

Kevin Stone Kevin2.Stone@uwe.ac.uk
Associate Lecturer - CHSS - HSS - USLW0001

Megan Wilkinson-Tough

Judy Laing



Abstract

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Involuntary detention is used internationally to detain and treat people who are deemed to have a mental disorder. In England and Wales, approved mental health professionals (AMHPs) co-ordinate Mental Health Act assessments which allow for patients to be detained. AMHPs have legal duties to identify, inform and consult with a patient's nearest relative (NR), who are, in turn, given powers to initiate or challenge detention. Our study takes an original approach through examining how AMHPs interpret their duties towards nearest relatives. We adopted a two-stage design, which involved an online questionnaire with 55 AMHPs and focus group discussions with 33 AMHPs. The research was conducted in England between 2017 and 2018. Our questionnaire found that a high proportion of AMHPs reported that they had spoken to NRs for background information when assessing patients under the Mental Health Act. However, AMHPs were less likely to ask patients about their views of involving the NR prior to assessment. Focus group findings showed that AMHPs saw the NR role as offering an important ‘safeguard’ on the basis that NRs could provide information about the patient and advocate on their behalf. AMHPs identified practical difficulties in balancing their legal obligation towards NRs and patients; particularly where issues of potential abuse were raised or where patients had identified that they did not want NR involvement. While AMHPs stated that they sought to prioritise patient wishes regarding confidentiality, their accounts identified that patient consent about information sharing was sometimes implied rather than sought explicitly. Our findings reinforce conclusions by the recent Independent Review of the MHA, which states that current NR provisions are ‘outdated, variable and insufficient’. We identify that current practice could be improved using advanced choice documents and outline implications for AMHP practice.

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 6, 2019
Online Publication Date Sep 30, 2019
Publication Date Jan 1, 2020
Deposit Date Oct 2, 2019
Publicly Available Date Oct 1, 2020
Journal Health and Social Care in the Community
Print ISSN 0966-0410
Electronic ISSN 1365-2524
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 28
Issue 1
Pages 300-308
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12864
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/2981546
Publisher URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/hsc.12864

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This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Dixon, J, Wilkinson‐Tough, M, Stone, K, Laing, J. Treading a tightrope: Professional perspectives on balancing the rights of patient's and relative's under the Mental Health Act in England. Health Soc Care Community. 2019; 00: 1– 9., which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12864. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving


Treading A Tightrope - Accepted Version (547 Kb)
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http://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved

Publisher Licence URL
http://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved

Copyright Statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Dixon, J, Wilkinson‐Tough, M, Stone, K, Laing, J. Treading a tightrope: Professional perspectives on balancing the rights of patient's and relative's under the Mental Health Act in England. Health Soc Care Community. 2019; 00: 1– 9., which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12864. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving





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