Hart Publishing, £20, pp 256

ISBN 1901362752

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Rating:

Mental health legislation in England and Wales is currently undergoing a major review. Some would say that this is not the right time to be thinking about introducing new, unprejudiced laws, when continuing professional concern and public outcry over the failure of community care and the emotionally charged issue of homicide by mentally ill people dominate media reporting of psychiatry. Others take the view that, for just those reasons, now is exactly the right time.

If one has sufficient understanding or interest to hold either point of view or even to know enough to be uncertain, then this book is essential reading. It arose from a project undertaken by the editors and their contributors and commissioned by the Department of Health to address the effectiveness of current mental health law. Law Without Enforcement successfully exposes and explores the law and its place in the care of people with mental health problems from an extraordinarily wide range of perspectives. It also has a major contribution to make to thinking about the relation between medicine in general and the legal process as a whole. One of the most striking aspects of this book is that such a slim volume can contain so much information, from exploring the debate surrounding mental incapacity to the impact of the press in shaping public opinion about mental illness, from audit and research into mental health law to achieving public policy ends through mental health legislation.

One is left with more questions than answers, which is how it should be. The editors have achieved their aim of raising the relevant issues and informing the debate about the current review of mental health law. This book should be mandatory reading for all those who are involved in drafting the new legislation. One can only hope that everything that emerges from the review process will be of the same quality as this text. Whether the new Mental Health Act, if that is to be its title, will be of value in mental health care or whether the “brooding presence,” as Eastman and Peay put it, of current legislation will be transformed into the black cloak of restrictiveness, blame, and “safety first” at all costs remains to be seen.