I think it’s interesting to comprehend the Mental Health Act 1983 from the point of view of what it’s actually there to do. The short-title of the Act suggests that it is all about mental health and wellbeing. Of course, we know it’s not – the Mental Health Act is of no relevance whatsoever to anyone who is mentally well. From that point of view it should have been called the Mental Illness Act 1983. Perhaps it should have been the Mental Disorder Act 1983 – after all, in its own long title it is described as “An Act to consolidate the law relating to mentally disordered persons”, whatever they are. It brought together all nineteenth and early twentieth century law on lunacy and vagrancy, replacing that awful terminology with stuff that hasn’t survived contact with the real world either.

I wonder, however, whether it should have been…