Adventures in 136 Land

Imagine this: you’re the police officer attending an incident where, despite your best efforts to do something different, you have no choice but to detain someone under s136 of the Mental Health Act 1983. You considered street triage, you called family and ultimately felt there was no other way, consistent with keeping this person safe […]

Reflecting on Toronto

Late last year, I was fortunate to be invited to Toronto, for the 4th Law Enforcement and Public Health conference to help co-convene a two-day event on ‘law enforcement and mental health’ with Professor Stuart Thomas from RMIT, Melbourne. We got to spend two days with a range of police officers, mental health professionals but […]

Twenty Nineteen

The forthcoming year is the sixtieth birthday of the first piece of modern mental health legislation – the Mental Health Act 1959. It’s worth noting this milestone, in my opinion, because sixty years on we are still struggling to think about how we give effect in the real world to some of its requirements. Section […]