Too often police forces are the only agency expected to respond to an emergency, particularly out of hours. Mental health services need better funding to support people properly.
A man waits to enter a supervised consumption site at a health centre in Calgary, Alta., in August 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Instead of forcing people into substance use treatment, provinces should work with municipalities and health boards to expand life-saving safe use sites and tackle the housing crisis.
New Zealand law allows people to be detained under a compulsory community treatment order – which they can’t refuse. But research shows compulsory treatment can make some mental health issues worse.
Involuntary detention under the Mental Health Act poses ethical challenges.
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A review has suggested giving patients who are detained in hospital the right to appeal decisions about their treatment. Sadly, this may never happen.
People with anorexia nervosa often see themselves as overweight when in fact they are not. This image depicts a young, thin woman who sees herself as larger than she is.
Tatyana Dzemileva/Shutterstock.com
Stuart Murray, University of California, San Francisco
Anorexia nervosa can be a deadly disease. A recent analysis of several studies showed that it may be even harder to treat than previously believed. But the news isn’t all bad.
South Africa’s Justice Dikgang Moseneke presided over hearings into the deaths of 144 mentally ill patients who were moved to unregistered NGOs.
ANA/Nokuthula Mbatha
Arbitration hearings into the deaths of mentally ill patients has brought to light shocking cruelty and neglect on the part of South African officials.
Ian Brady in police custody in 1965.
PA Wire/PA Images
Recent Queensland reforms – due to take effect in March 2017 – do not include legislative safeguards for a certain group of people with mental illness.
Until 2013, laws in every Australian state and territory allowed people to be forced to have psychiatric treatment even if they competently refused it.
from shutterstock.com
Until 2013, Australian state and territory laws allowed forcing people into psychiatric treatment if it was thought necessary to protect them from serious harm – even if they competently refused it.
Psychiatrists are here to try to make sense of the complexities of human behaviour in those who see them, and to help them get better. Many of those who are seen by psychiatrists are very ill indeed, and…
Being sectioned in a mental hospital may not mean the best care.
Truester
Claims that doctors are sectioning mental health patients in order to get them access to beds on psychiatric wards amount to “more than anecdotal evidence”, according to a committee of MPs who have just…