Exam question:  where someone has been assessed under the Mental Health Act 1983 by an Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP) and two Doctors and the decision is taken to make a s2 or s3 application for admission to hospital, does this mean the patient is now “liable to be detained”? – by extension, would it […]

In 1939, Professor Lionel Penrose proposed the hypothesis that there was a negative correlation between the number of psychiatric beds in a country and its prison population.  The fewer psychiatric inpatient places, the more people will end up incarcerated in prison, albeit with a timelag after the decommissioning of the beds which could be as […]

When does detention under s135 or 136 end, once someone has been detained in a place of safety?!  It’s actually easy to answer, just harder to put into practice. It ends when one of three things happens – A Doctor says, “this person is not mentally disordered within the meaning of the Mental Health Act”; […]