- Job Adverts
- Cynics Guide: Psychiatric Hotline Protocol
- Define My Madness ?
- You Don’t Have To Be Mad, But It Helps
- Better Than Butlins ?
- Stop In The Name Of My Law !
- Sectioning Detrimental To Self Esteem
- Avoiding Becoming A Patient
- Cynics Guide: Staff Retention (Part 1)
- [Cynic's Guide: How To Blog]
- Major And Minor Psychoneurotics
- Cynic’s Guide: Not Taught At University
- You know you’re an RMN when…
- A Glossary of terms
- Cynic’s Guide: How To Be An Antipsychiatrist
- The Devil’s Dictionary (Mental Nurse Edition)
- Students Guide to Acute Inpatient Wards
- ABC: A to C
- ABC: D to F
- ABC: G to I
Following requests for more information about the UK mental health system we present:
Cynics Guide To The Mental Health Act : 1 : Principles and Definitions
Please take all the following with a pinch of salt. There are many strictly informative sites about the UK mental health system, remember mental nurse is not one of them 
In the UK there are two mental health systems The Mental health Act 1983 [MHA83], for England and Wales. Also the Mental Health Care and Treatment Act 2003 [MHCT03], for Scotland. The Scottish Act is only now coming into force around Scotland.
The English Act primarily deals with people who are held in hospital against their will (sectioned) the Scottish Act applies to all receiving psychiatric treatment.
Definitions: Define My Madness !
[MHA83]
Mental Disorder means…
… mental illness, arrested or incomplete development of mind, psychopathic disorder and any other disorder or disability of mind.Psychopathic Disorder…
… means a persistent disorder or disability of mind (whether or not including significant impairment of intelligence) which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned
Mental Illness…
… is not defined. This missing definition is especially odd, in that this is the most common form of Mental Disorder for which people are dealt with under the Act. While no legal definition exists, a number of attempts to define Mental Illness have been made.
[MHCT03]
328 Meaning of “mental disorder”
(1) Subject to subsection (2) below, in this Act “mental disorder” means any-
mental illness; personality disorder; or learning disability, however caused or manifested; and cognate expressions shall be construed accordingly.
Luckily to make life easy Mental Illness is not given a nice clear definition. In practice mental illness is what a psychiatrist defines as a mental illness. In Europe this would normally mean an ICD10 code, in the United States a DSMIV code. The European system is better because it has a higher number.
Self inflicted insanity (drugs or more drugs) do not get you labeled as mentally ill, at least in the short term.
Nigel Turner’s Hyperguide suggests the courts would use a common sense definition of insanity. That is, what a sensible man in the street would understand by the words mental illness.
This is a worry as most people don’t have a clue what mental illness means.
On my next set of days off I will complete the next part.
How To Get Sectioned
In my experience, all you need to do to get sectioned is to yell at the crisis team/duty psych at full volume that you don’t believe they’re helping you and in fact are hindering you and that you’d be better off organising your own mental health care (thus meaning that they start to ;prove’ to you that they have more power). That, or start to put/threaten someone else in danger or compromise their safety (note: this can be as simple as saying that you’re not going to tell them that you are delusional/psychotic).
It’s a fun world.
Lis x
PS. How was your holiday?
My advice would be to do it in a public place, so that the police can ’136′ you.
If you insist on going mad indoors (maybe because it is raining), then after they and the ambulance staff have had a private little conference, let them ‘guide’ you outside.
The only way I could get someone sectioned in my A&E department (when still daft enough to be a nurse) was to inform the sappy social worker, that when the patient woke up, I’d push him out the door, and after he killed someone I’d make sure ‘The Sun’ had a copy of said Social workers face…
Finally – _never_ be drunk or you’ll spend hours waiting for the psychiatrist as they wait for you to sober up.