Mental Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, the key test is whether there is an underlying mental disorder. That may exhibit itself in any of the behaviours listed in the amendment. The question which the clinician has to ask himself or herself is whether there is an underlying mental disorder. They should not allow the issue to be clouded by extraneous behaviour that has nothing to do with the mental disorder. As I was saying, the effect of not having exclusions along the lines set out in paragraphs (c) and (d) of the amendment is that it will confuse the role of psychiatry in the public mind; moving them, as far as perceptions go, from the proper aim of assessment and treatment of mental disorder into the area of social control. We have often spoken about the fears and apprehensions of the black and ethnic minority communities. Disproportionately high numbers of people from B and E backgrounds are diagnosed with major mental illness and detained. To the extent that the Bill may serve to add to the current negative view of mental health services among those communities, it will have failed. That point was very powerfully made by the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, earlier. There is a real worry that stereotyping and misunderstanding of black people may lead to unnecessary and unjustified use of compulsion. That worry is not imaginary; it is based on current practice under the 1983 Act. Extensive literature confirms that racism can apply in mental health practice. It is even more likely to happen under the broader definition of ““mental disorder””. Psychiatrists acknowledge how difficult it is to distinguish symptoms of genuine mental disorder such as hallucinations from beliefs that to a particular individual may be culturally or religiously appropriate, such as belief in spirits or in witchcraft. Without an exclusion of the kind I have proposed, we will see an increase in the degree to which diagnosis of mental disorder depends on discriminatory assumptions and on the subjective judgment of clinicians. That is the rationale for the amendment. I believe that the arguments which the Government have put forward for resisting it are wrong. I therefore ask the House to give it full support. I beg to move.