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Mental Health Law Online

The internet resource on mental health law, and mental capacity law, for England & Wales. You can sign up for free email updates, the online forum and the CPD scheme (which provides 12 hours for £60 and is suitable for lawyers and non-lawyers). The abbreviations are similar but MHLO, MHLA and MHLR are all different.

The main content of this website has been divided into Case law (2368), Legislation (378) and Resources (1,051), together with separate Information pages (328) to link everything together.

  Forum topics


Contacts

The Magic Book is a database of contact details which currently contains 306 pages.


  News and updates

All the latest updates to the website can be seen on on the MHLO updates forum category. The five most recent appear here.

  • 10/10/24: Case (Representation during DOL review period). Re PQ (Court authorised DOL: Representation during review period) [2024] EWCOP 41 (T3) — "[T]he central questions for the Court are: (a) Whether PQ's continued participation during the review period requires her to have some form of representation, whether by a Litigation Friend, an ALR, or a r1.2 representative, in order for there to be compliance with ECHR Art 5; (b) If so, what form of participation should the court require given the options available; and (c) If the LAA refused to fund PQ's representation during the review period, whether by a Litigation Friend or an ALR, what steps should the Court then take?"
  • 10/10/24: Case (Belief and capacity). Hemachandran v Thirumalesh [2024] EWCA Civ 896 — (1) The judge had made an error of law in regarding the absence of belief as determinative of the functional test. The Court of Appeal noted: "The proper application of the statutory test does no more than reflect that, where there is an objectively verifiable medical consensus as to the consequences of having or not having medical treatment, if the patient does not believe or accept that information to be true, it may be that they are unable to understand and or use and weigh the information in question." (2) The judge also failed to give sufficient reasons for disagreeing with the unanimous view of the experts that the patient had capacity to make decisions as to her medical treatment.
  • 10/10/24: Case (Discharge of RRO). University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust v Thirumalesh [2023] EWCOP 43 — Following the patient's death, her family applied for discharge of a transparency order, and the Trust argued for its continuation for a further 8 weeks. The judge noted that there is little practical difference between transparency orders and reporting restrictions orders (RROs) and uniform terminology would be more desirable.


  Consultations

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  To do

Things that will end up with their own MHLO pages, when I have time...


  Email updates

Choose occasional and/or monthly update emails. To sign up, please go to the email updates subscription page.


  CPD

The CPD scheme is primarily aimed at mental health solicitors, and is an ideal way to evidence your continued competence, but is also suitable for barristers, psychiatrists, social workers and psychiatric nurses. For £60, you can obtain 12 CPD credits.


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  Books

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