Talk:Approved mental health professional

It would be good to have informed contributions from people with mental health problems who have experienced being detained, carers of those who have been detained, other AMHPs and related professionals, in working to elaborate on this article and build a body of accessible knowledge and experience of the process of assessment under the Mental Health Act (1983) and related legislation.

Lack of Criticism of the current system

I will add more issues pertaining to the current setup of the system but below are some points:

1) There does not appear to be a publically available list of the 'AMHP's, so one cannot check whether someone is actually a AMHP.

2) Lack of safeguards in relation to the wrongful detention of people who pose no realistic threat to either themselves or the public.

3) Practical enforcement of duties imposed upon AMHP's. In particular, what oversight is given to make sure that AMHPs follow the rules required of them (for instance, in the case of certain ethnic minorities, do MPs and others know that some AMHPs indicate language difficulties where none exist to avoid informing relatives?).

4) The real intention of the MHA as a repressive and oppressive piece of legislation to enforce social control & social-engineering policies in a non-transparent manner that is far divorced from any needs to ensure the safety of either 'patients' (considering that they are sane & non-violent in many cases, why they are called 'patients' is a debatable issue) or the public.

5) The lack of complaints mechanisms including contacts for a Complaints Body in relation to AMHPs and the use of the Mental Health Act, especially in cases where no hard evidence exists to warrant the detention of people who have no violent criminal past whatsoever. I believe that the article should indicate whether the current system has Safeguards OR Complaints mechanisms within it.

6) THERE IS A COMPLETE LACK OF EVIDENTIAL REQUIREMENT IN THE CURRENT SYSTEM WHICH MEANS THAT PEOPLE WHO HAVE COMMITTED NO CRIME CAN BE DETAINED BY MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES AGAINST THEIR WILL, WITH SOME PEOPLE BEING FORCIBLY MEDICATED AGAINST THEIR WILL. THAT IS TO SAY, IT IS COMPLETELY WRONG TO PRESUPPOSE THAT ONLY VIOLENT CRIMINALS OR INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE OTHERWISE VIOLENT ARE DETAINED UNDER THE MENTAL HEALTH ACT. THE LACK OF EVIDENTIAL REQUIREMENT (IN THE WAY OF AN OFFENCE COMMITTED BY SOMEBODY, OR AN EVENT WITH WITNESSES WHO ARE FORTHCOMING TO A WITNESSED OFFENCE) MEANS THAT *POTENTIALLY ANYBODY* CAN BE SECTIONED OFF UNDER THESE ARRANGEMENTS.

7) According to the Code of Practice, Autism can be used as a pretense for sectioning off a patient. This seems most grotesque and immoral, but if you read through the CoP, the prolonging of detainment due to Autism is covered in the book.

There are many other problems with the way that the Mental Health Act is implemented. It would seem common sense that only those who commit offences, or have a history of violent offences, should be detained under the MHA, but the current situation is that anybody can be sectioned off without evidence. There is a long history of Psychiatrists using fallacious reasoning, and even lying insofar as they state that they possess evidence which they do not, which shows that Psychiatry/Psychology as a subject is of dubious morality. The LONG historical abuse of Psychiatry and sister subjects (with Psychology included as a sister subject) for Political control and abuse is well-documented (on Wikipedia and other sources). Application of common sense dictates that what is reported can be, and likely is, only the tip of the Psychiatric/Psychology abuse iceberg. Some people might wonder why this is, but even other professionals working in the field of Mental Health seem to have a good idea :

"These proposals seem to indicate that the Government is motivated to increase social control through the agency of psychiatry. I will argue that although the state relinquished its historical role in incarceration of the mad to the medical profession in 1959, it is currently trying to re-establish control over the process by enacting some of the most *repressive* psychiatric legislation of recent times." - JOANNA MONCRIEFF in "The politics of a new Mental Health Act" to be found upon http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/183/1/8 as of October 2015.

ASavantDude (talk) 17:16, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

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