Amendments to the Mental Health Act (精神衛生法) yesterday passed a third reading at the legislature, with changes to expand patients’ rights including limits on orders to confine people.
The government said that it pushed to update the act, first promulgated in 1990, as no significant amendments had been made in more than a decade, and after a series of high-profile incidents involving people with severe mental illness.
In May 2014, Cheng Chieh (鄭捷) stabbed four people to death and injured 22 in an attack on the Taipei MRT rail system. Two years later, in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖), Wang Ching-yu (王景玉), who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, beheaded a four-year-old girl. In 2019, a man surnamed Cheng (鄭), also diagnosed with schizophrenia, stabbed railway police officer Lee Cheng-han (李承翰) to death in Chiayi County.
Photo: CNA
The amendments seek to guarantee patients’ rights, with a measure asking doctors to use methods to better inform people about their treatment, while removing a clause that allowed doctors to seek approval only from a patient’s guardian or caretaker.
Mental health facilities should observe all regulations and seek patients’ consent, according to the draft amendments.
Judges must issue a court order for a patient to be confined to a healthcare facility, and a community treatment committee would be tasked with designating facilities, applying for mandatory confinement for people with severe conditions or to extend such confinement periods, it states.
A panel of judges, experts and patient rights groups should review all applications to confine patients to hospitals, and patients may not be confined for more than 60 days, it states.
As people with severe mental health problems struggle to obtain legal aid, the amendments mandate that mental health facilities provide people with legal aid in severe cases.
A court can appoint a lawyer to represent a person if they do not already have legal representation, the amendments state.
When a person’s application to the court to leave a facility is approved, the facility is obligated to conduct an assessment of whether the patient should remain, the bill states.
If the facility has assessed that they should remain, the patient can be hospitalized and would not be allowed to transfer, it states.
The amendments also seeks to observe the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Cabinet said.
The majority of the amended act is to be promulgated within two years after its announcement by the Cabinet, with certain articles delayed until the Cabinet and the Judicial Yuan discuss the issues, the bill states.
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