THE RIGHT OF A MENTALLY HANDICAPPED PERSON TO A HOME, TO EDUCATION AND TO SOCIALISATION: a case for exclusion from the Mental Health Act, 1959

The most important aspect of any health service legislation is adequate classification of the service eligible clientele. The problems and solutions it poses can only be measured by the way in which it meets their needs. The Mental Health Act, 1959 devised an arbitrary classification, “mental disorder”, which includes three disparate populations — those suffering from mental illness, psychopathic disorder and subnormality — which have entirely different characteristics. They should therefore never have been considered for legislative purposes as a homogeneous group. The theme of this paper is that the Mental Health Act was intended to meet the needs of the psychiatrically ill, mentally handicapped people being merely included without separate and detailed consideration. 1978 Blackwell Publishing Ltd