Critical debate 9.2

Possible answer to: How is the legal regulation of mental health nursing affected by different perspectives: 

• The legal perspective?
• The social perspective?
• The professional perspective?

What makes them different?

The chapter discusses these three perspectives in relation to mental health legislation. Here you are asked to consider the role of these perspectives in the regulation of nursing in particular. Of course, the legal regulation of professional roles is part of the mental health law, for example stating the extent and limits of nurses’ powers to detain, and detailing which professional groups can take on particular legally recognised roles, such as the Approved Mental Health Practitioner role.  Legal regulation crosses over with the professional domain in the guidance for professionals contained in the Mental Health Act Code of Practice. Professional practice is regulated by the Nursing and Midwifery Council, which has its own code of practice. The social perspective is interesting because it illuminates the ways in which the intersection of legal and professional worlds serves a social control function in society. Amongst other things the social perspective helps explain how different actions are seen to be legitimate or not. For example, violence exercised by the state, such as by the police, is viewed by the public as legitimate if a fair process is seen to have been followed. Alternately, indiscriminate or arbitrary exercise of powers is seen as illegitimate. Thus, violence within the psychiatric system may be legally legitimated, for instance forced medication, but may be seen as illegitimate if people hold to different social understandings of mental distress. To some extent, such conflict of ideas and different views on the legitimacy of psychiatric power are at the heart of critical objections to psychiatry.