Website of the Department of Health

Mental Health Act 1983 information leaflets

The Department has updated its model Mental Health Act 1983 patient information leaflets to reflect changes which come into effect on 1 April 2009.  These are the introduction of independent mental health advocates under the Mental Health Act 2007 and the inception of the Care Quality Commission (which replaces the former Mental Health Act Commission) under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

The leaflets are designed to assist hospitals and local social services authorities (LSSAs) to meet their legal obligations under the Act to provide written information to patients subject to detention and other compulsory measures under the Act.

These leaflets are non-statutory and there is no obligation on hospitals or LSSAs to use them. The leaflets are available here in both Portable Document (PDF) and Rich Text (RTF-word-processable) formats.

It is no longer possible to purchase hard copies of these leaflets through the NHS Forms Contract. The leaflets are in English – where there is a demonstrated local need, the Department encourages hospitals and LSSAs to provide material in other appropriate languages.

Hospitals and LSSAs who use the current leaflets should note that:

• detailed information on contacting the Care Quality Commission is given in a separate leaflet.  This replaces the leaflet about the Mental Health Act Commission;
  
  
• there are also separate leaflets on supervised community treatment, electro-convulsive therapy, hospital and limitation directions (section 45A) and the effect of ending special restrictions on forensic (Part 3) patients;
  
  
• there is no longer a separate leaflet on patients’ correspondence (and the other leaflets should not be used, without modification, in high security psychiatric hospitals because they do not deal with the special rules which apply to correspondence in those hospitals);
  
  
• the leaflets are not numbered sequentially, but have a short name which reflects their contents.

Note: from time to time, corrections or changes may be made to the leaflets on this site.