Mental health nursing’s therapeutic potential is compromised in the revised Mental Health Bill, say Philip Barker and Poppy Buchanan-Barker

The revised Mental Health Bill makes some praiseworthy proposals. But it has been condemned for its tacit encouragement of ‘scaremongering’ and undue emphasis on ‘coercion’. Its failings derive largely from assumptions about the nature of mental disorder that fuel moral panic over the dangers posed by the mentally ill. We rarely acknowledge that mental illness is a diagnosis of exclusion. Diseases such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder can only be diagnosed symptomatically. No tests reveal the chemical imbalances or biological anomalies that allegedly cause mental illness. Almost any form of problematic behaviour risks being defined as a mental disorder.