Launch of Routledge Handbook of Mental Health Law

12 Dec 2023

The Routledge Handbook of Mental Health Law jointly edited by Professor Mary Donnelly of the Law School, UCC and Professor Brendan Kelly,  Professor of Psychiatry, Trinity College Dublin was published in November 2023

The book contains 39 chapters with contributors from 18 different countries and includes contributions from ethics, law, philosophy, psychology, psychiatry and lived experience.

This is a timely moment for the expansive exploration of mental health law undertaken in this Handbook.   The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which came into force in 2008, sought to transform the landscape in which mental health law is developed and implemented and it is an opportune time to consider how effective these efforts have been in improving the lives and enhancing the rights of people with mental illness.

In their Introduction to the Handbook, the editors write:

This Handbook reflects our view that we can and should demand more from mental health law in providing a framework to protect the rights and advance the recovery of people experiencing mental illness.  We also recognise the limits of law and that legal measures may have unforeseen and undesirable consequences.  This is why we must interrogate not just legal frameworks but also the range of factors that influence how these operate in practice.

A conversation where the editors reflect on the scope of the book and the insights it offers can be viewed here

The book will be launched at the 1st International Conference on Decision Making in Medicine and Law: Opportunities and pitfalls of information technologies (DMM&L 2023) at Sapienza University of Rome

on Friday December 15, 2023 at 14:00 CET (GMT +1)

For online access to the launch, follow this link on the day, and click on the launch banner to enter the video conference: https://mclabservices.di.uniroma1.it/dmm&l/2023