{"id":3457,"date":"2018-12-23T22:09:41","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T21:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=3457"},"modified":"2018-12-23T22:10:02","modified_gmt":"2018-12-23T21:10:02","slug":"should-you-appeal-against-your-mental-health-act-section","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2018\/12\/23\/should-you-appeal-against-your-mental-health-act-section\/","title":{"rendered":"Should you appeal against your Mental Health Act Section?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Paul Gosney, Paul Lomax, Carwyn Hooper, Aileen O\u2019Brien<\/p>\n<p>We felt that there was an acceptance in mental healthcare that appeal tribunals are an inherently good thing, that they are an appropriate counterweight to the power the state gives health professionals to detain and treat people against their will. This praise of tribunals is found from national reviews of the mental health law down to our own daily interaction with patients.<\/p>\n<p>However when reflecting on our actual experience it seemed very few patients had their care directly changed by the tribunal process. On few occasions, it seemed, were the plans made by healthcare professionals rejected by the tribunals.<\/p>\n<p>The aim of the paper was to analyse the potential impact of tribunals on patient care. Are they a vital safeguard to the rights of a patient? Are they an irrelevant window dressing? Or are they potentially damaging to the patient and the wider health system?<\/p>\n<p>Finally we thought about what advice we should be giving to patients about appealing against their detention, if any. Should we be encouraging people to assert their right to an appeal? On the face of it, yes.\u00a0 But what if we know the chances of successful appeal are slim and that it will cause distress and cost valuable resources.<\/p>\n<p>The main problem we faced in considering the issue is; what is an appropriate rate of discharge from a Tribunal?\u00a0 Does a low rate of successful appeal against detention represent a well functioning system that makes few errors, or a system stacked against the patient? We hope that this work feeds in to the ongoing discussions about how the Tribunal system works and how it could be improved.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Paper title:<\/strong> \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/jme.bmj.com\/content\/early\/2018\/12\/04\/medethics-2018-104947\">Current appeal system for those detained in England and Wales under the Mental Health Act needs reform<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Authors:<\/strong> \u00a0Paul Gosney<sup>1<\/sup>, Paul Lomax<sup>1<\/sup>, Carwyn Hooper<sup>2<\/sup>, Aileen O\u2019Brien<sup>2<\/sup><\/p>\n<p><strong>Affiliations:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><sup>1<\/sup>\u00a0South West London and St George\u2019s NHS Mental Health NHS Trust.<\/p>\n<p><sup>2<\/sup>\u00a0St George\u2019s University of London.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Competing interests:<\/strong> \u00a0Carwyn Hooper is the General and Company Secretary of the IME and a member of the IME BMJ Ltd Management Committee for the Journal of Medical Ethics.<!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Paul Gosney, Paul Lomax, Carwyn Hooper, Aileen O\u2019Brien We felt that there was an acceptance in mental healthcare that appeal tribunals are an inherently good thing, that they are an appropriate counterweight to the power the state gives health professionals to detain and treat people against their will. This praise of tribunals is found [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2018\/12\/23\/should-you-appeal-against-your-mental-health-act-section\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":353,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Should you appeal against your Mental Health Act Section? - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2018\/12\/23\/should-you-appeal-against-your-mental-health-act-section\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Should you appeal against your Mental Health Act Section? - Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Paul Gosney, Paul Lomax, Carwyn Hooper, Aileen O\u2019Brien We felt that there was an acceptance in mental healthcare that appeal tribunals are an inherently good thing, that they are an appropriate counterweight to the power the state gives health professionals to detain and treat people against their will. 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