Admission of a mental disabled people to institutional care. Effective protection or arbitrary detention? (PDF)

Essay from the year 2020 in the subject Health - Persons with disabilities, University of Manchester, course: LLM Healthcare Ethics and the Law, language: English, abstract: The aim of this essay is to critically evaluate the development of procedural safeguards regarding deprivation of incapacitated patients' liberty in institutional care. It will assess the extent to which the law is successful in protecting patients' rights against arbitrary detention, and led to the conclusion that neither the past law nor the current law have adequately safeguarded people's rights against arbitrary detainment.

To do so, it will start by evaluating the development of the protection of liberty frameworks in the UK, and how their inadequacy led to the implementation of DOLS in hospitals and care homes. Consequently, there will be an evaluation of three main criticisms. Firstly, it will look at the level of complexity of DOLS, both on a politico-legal plane and on a practical medical plane. Secondly, it will look at what is held to constitute as a deprivation of liberty, and how there are significant gaps in this definition.

Thirdly, it will take a closer look at the implications of the Cheshire West judgment and evaluate the consequences of broadening the scope for DOLS. This essay will thus reach the conclusion that the law relating to the admission of incapacitated patients has failed to properly assess individuals' rights to protection from arbitrary detention.