Routledge Handbook of Mental Health Law (Routledge Handbooks in Law)

Book info: Routledge Handbook of Mental Health Law (Routledge Handbooks in Law) (Paperback, 756 pages) – Routledge, 2025. Language: English.

Mental health law is a rapidly evolving area of practice and research, with growing global dimensions. This work reflects the increasing importance of this field, critically discussing key issues of controversy and debate, and providing up-to-date analysis of cutting-edge developments in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and Australia.

This is a timely moment for this book to appear. The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) sought to transform the landscape in which mental health law is developed and implemented. This Convention, along with other developments, has, to varying degrees, informed sweeping legislative reforms in many countries around the world. These and other developments are discussed here. Contributors come from a wide range of countries and a variety of academic backgrounds including ethics, law, philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology. Some contributions are also informed by lived experience, whether in person or as family members. The result is a rich, polyphonic, and sometimes discordant account of what mental health law is and what it might be.

The Handbook is aimed at mental health scholars and practitioners as well as students of law, human rights, disability studies, and psychiatry, and campaigners and law- and policy-makers.

Chapters 1, 21 and 36 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license, and Chapter 35 is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

Brendan D. Kelly is Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

Mary Donnelly is Professor of Law at University College Cork, Ireland.