Talk:Mental health law

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I feel that this article is a bit misleading. There are aspects of the law dealing with mental health beyond statutes about treatment and restraint of mentally ill persons. In common law jurisdictions, there are available to defendants in criminal cases the defences of insanity as well as sane and insane automatism, both of which could be regarded as falling within the umbrella of mental health law, but are not necessarily codified. They are codified in my state, but only because there is a criminal code. However, more in keeping with the current text of this article, we also have statutes dealing with the powers of courts to send defendants for assessment for fitness to stand trial, making hospital orders etc. I will research and try to add to this article. - Mark 08:14, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Dear Mark, exactly why I wanted a lawyer to look at the article and many thanks for doing so. I didn't even know if "codify" was used correctly. In creating this stub I wanted to unify aspects of the law that related to mental health to create an entry point for anyone interested in that area. At the time I only thought of the provisions that one usually finds in a mental health act. However, as you so correctly point out, McNaghten rules, mens rea and a host of other legal issues are also part of this. I have gone around the law articles adding "Mental health law" as a category to those articles I have found. I have reworded the main article but please do so yourself, or indeed anyone else. I have made a link to automatism (law) which is currently empty. The link to automatism refers to a technique in literature. If you have the time you might want to create an entry for that. --CloudSurfer 19:02, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)