Rethinking Mental Health Laws: An Integrated Approach

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The Difficulties and Downsides of Mental Health Courts: Time to pause and reflect
Downloadable Paper (available soon)
Presented at The NSW Law Reform Commission together with the Sydney Institute of Criminology Symposium entitled Should NSW have a Mental Health Court?

'There must be some way out of here' - Why the disabilities convention is potentially the best weapon in the fight against ‘sanism'.
Downloadable Paper [PDF 270kb]
Presented at the Launch of the Centre for the Advancement of Law and Mental Health

Supported Decision-Making: A New Era For Mental Health Law, Involuntary Psychiatric Treatment, And Disability Rights?
Downloadable Paper (available soon)
Presented at the 13th Greek/Australian International Legal and Medical Conference entitled The Law, Medicine and the Public Good: Are We Putting Our Best Foot Forward?

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The Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration
Mental Health Issues and the Administration of Justice

The Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration
Mental Health Issues and the Administration of Justice
Topic: Supervision orders and the jurisprudence of the detention of the mentally ill

Inaugural International Advance Care Planning Conference
Advance Care Planning: Working Towards Success and Sustainability
Topic: Advance care planning for people with mental illness: Ethics and law

Non-Adversarial Justice: Implications for the Legal System and Society Conference
Topic: Non-adversarial justice and mental health review tribunals: a reflexive turn

Risk Management Authority
Working in Partnership: Principles and values in multi-agency Risk Management
Topic: Risk Assessment for the Courts: Finding the Middle Ground [PDF 88KB]

International Association of Forensic Mental Health Services
10th Annual Conference: Mental Health and Forensic Practice Across the Lifespan: Prevention and Promotion
Topic: Evidence of Risk for the Preventive Detention of Sex Offenders: The Judiciary Strikes Back

European Association of Psychology and Law Conference, Goteborg, Sweden
Topic: Asperger's disorder and family law

Victorian Legal Aid
Professional Legal Education Seminar
Topic: Preventive Detention of Sex Offenders: Recent Trends [PDF 84KB]

Professor Bernadette McSherry
(with Professor Patrick Keyzer)

Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL)
2010 Congress: Prediction - The Holy Grail
Topic: Perceptions of the Effectiveness of Preventive Detention Regimes in Reducing Risk

Australia & New Zealand Society of Criminology
23rd Annual Conference: Cross-border and Transnational Crime: Risks and Responses

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Australian Psychological Society
2009 Conference: AdvAncing Forensic Psychology
Topic: A human rights evaluation of risk and coercion

Australian & New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL)
Autumn Symposium: Control and the Professionals
Topic: Agents of State Control: The Ethics of Risk Assessment Testimony for Preventive Detention Schemes

Greek/Australian International Legal and Medical Conference
12th Annual Conference: Our Challenged World: How can Law and Medicine Respond?
Topic: Rethinking Mental Health Laws: International Trends [PDF 91kb]

Greek/Australian International Legal and Medical Conference
12th Annual Conference: Our Challenged World: How can Law and Medicine Respond?
Topic: Laws prohibiting abortion: A violation of the right to health?
This article argues that restricting access to abortion services violates the international legal right to health.
The article begins by discussing the nature and sources of the right to health under international law. It then proceeds to consider the development of the right to reproductive health as part of the general right to health. The central proposition of the article is that the right to access abortion services forms a part of the right to reproductive health. Therefore, abortion restrictive regulation violates the right to reproductive health as part of the general right to health. Further, not only do laws restricting access to abortion services prima facie violate the right to health, but they also violate the requirement that this right be implemented without discrimination of any kind.
Photos from the conference

International Association of Forensic Mental Health Services
9th Annual Conference:Facing the Future: Forensic Mental Health Services in Change
Topic: Managing Fear: Preventive detention and the role of mental health professionals

International Association of Forensic Mental Health Services
9th Annual Conference: Facing the Future: Forensic Mental Health Services in Change
Topic: Just Desserts for the “Mad Bomber”: A Coherent Approach to Sentencing People With Mental Illnesses [PDF 89kb]

Australian Community Support Organisation (ASCO)
4th Forensic Disabilities Conference: Disability and Justice: Many faces, equal rights?
Topic: Legal Capacity in the International Human Rights Framework
When Australia ratified the United Nation Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it accepted to be bound to a new international human rights standard.  The Disabilities Convention provides in its Article 12 (2) that “States Parties shall recognise that persons with disabilities enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life”.
Beyond this, Article 12 clarifies safeguards to persons with disabilities exercising legal capacity and accessing the support they may require to do so. It establishes an unprecedented degree of respect to self-direction in decision-making with an aim to carefully balance the twin issues of protection and autonomy within the context of legal capacity as a matter of equality before the law.
This paper will address what framework the Disabilities Convention establishes for treatment decisions within restrictive settings. It will assess the Disabilities Convention’s move away from substituted decision-making to supported decision-making and what supported decision-making may look like within a forensic setting.

Faculty of Medicine, Monash University
International Conference: Children and the Law: International approaches to children and their vulnerabilities
Topic: Young people, mental health and human rights: Assessing mental health law with a human rights lens

China Law Society
XXIVth IVR World Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy: Global Harmony and Rule of Law
Topic: Mental Impairment as a Defence in International Criminal Law

Co-ordinator for Special Workshop on Defenses and Punishment in International Criminal Law
Program of Special Workshops and Working Groups

Australian & New Zealand Society of Criminology (ANZSOC)
22nd Annual Conference: Crime and Justice Challenges in the 21st Century: Victims, Offenders and Communities
Topic: Preventive Detention of Sex Offenders: Themes from the Case Law
The Dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act 2003 (Qld) represented the first attempt in Australia to detain certain sex offenders on the grounds of ‘dangerousness’ after the expiry of the offender’s sentence. In 2004, a majority of the High Court in Fardon v Attorney-General (Qld) (2004) 223 CLR 575 upheld the validity of the Queensland Act and similar schemes now exist in Western Australia and New South Wales.
While preventive detention schemes may aid in protecting the community through the deprivation of liberty of certain offenders, they clearly raise human rights concerns, have the potential to lead to large increases in the prison population, are costly and offer no guarantee that the overall incidence of sexual or violent crimes will be reduced.
This paper analyses some of the themes emerging from the developing case law in this area. It will focus in particular on recent decisions by the Supreme Court of Western Australia and compare the emerging themes of these cases with those in other jurisdictions.

Australian & New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL)
29th Annual Congress: Families in Law: Investigation, Intervention and Protection
Topic: Protecting the Interests of Carers and Family Members through Mental Health Legislation: Recent Trends
Since the 1980s, Mental Health Acts have generally referred to the relevant rights of individuals with mental illnesses. More recently, the interests of carers and family members have been the subject of law reform endeavours.
This paper outlines recent legislative attempts to ensure the views of carers and family members are considered in decisions to treat those with mentalillnesses on an involuntary basis. The provision of information to and the inclusion of carers and family members in Tribunal hearings.
This paper will also present the findings of a series of interviews carried out with representatives of carer organisations across Australia. Common themes will be discussed as to the role of the law in ensuring that the views of carers and family members are heard throughout the civil commitment process.

Annegret Kämpf

Australian & New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL)
29th Annual Congress: Families in Law: Investigation, Intervention and Protection
Topic: Illness, Abuse within Families and Human Rights

10 Dec

Annegret Kämpf
Keynote Speaker

Victorian Legal Assistance Forum, Melbourne
Legal Assistance Dialogue: Access to Justice – Challenges of developing a holistic legal service for people with a disability
Topic: The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and Access to Justice [Invited forum speech]

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The Australian Sociological Association (TASA)
2008 Annual Conference: Re-imagining Society
Abstract: Reclaiming a sociological voice in mental health law [PDF 67kb]

Australian & New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL)
28th Annual Congress: Risks vs Rights
Paper 1: The right to health in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability: developing principles for clinical practice [PDF 16kb]
Paper 2: Collaborative decision making: An international comparison of psychiatric advance directive provisions

Australian & New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL)
28th Annual Congress: Risks vs Rights
Paper 1: Fitness to interview: Review, reform and reconceptualisation
Paper 2: Duties and rights to detain the suicidal and dangerous: the liability of psychiatrists and police

Australian & New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL)
28th Annual Congress: Risks vs Rights
Paper: Community treatment orders in the light of a new human rights framework

Australian & New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL)
28th Annual Congress:Risks vs Rights
Poster: Mental Health Consequences of Forced Sterilizations and Prohibitions on Abortion

50th Anniversary Public Lecture
Opening minds not locking doors: rethinking mental health laws [PDF 258kb]

Global Consortium for the Advancement of Promotion and Prevention in Mental Health ( GCAPP)
5th World Conference: Promotion of Mental Health and the Prevention of Mental and Behavioural Disorders: From Margins to Mainstream
Abstract: The role of law in the prevention of mental illness and the promotion of health and well-being [PDF  68kb]

Monday Colloquium
Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and North Western Mental Health
Seminar: Rethinking Mental Health Laws: International Trends

International Association of Forensic Mental Health Services
8th Annual Conference:The Interface between Forensic and General Mental Health Services
Paper: Hospital Orders For Mentally Ill Offenders In Australia: An Appropriate Diversionary Option?

Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law
19th Annual Conference
Abstract Accepted: The Emerging Principles in International Jurisprudence, Gender and the Right to Health [PDF 18kb]

The Australian Society of Legal Philosophy
Annual Conference
Paper: From Prediction to Precaution: Criminalisation in a Time of Uncertainty

The Law and Society Association
Annual Conference
Abstract: Law and Urban Slums: The Emergence of Exclusionary Power  [PDF 26kb]

Forum on Advance Directives for the Mental Health Community Coalition ACT
Paper: Advance Directives and the Translation of Human Rights Principles in Mental Health Law Towards a Contextual Analysis [PDF 176 Kb]

Australian & New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL), Victorian Branch
Autumn Symposium: Political Elements in the Practice of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law
Paper: From Prediction to Precaution: The Politics of Uncertainty and the Role of Mental Health Professionals

Australian & New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL), South Australian Branch
Seminar: Addictions & Criminal Responsibility
Paper: Drug-Associated Psychoses and Criminal Responsibility [PDF 96kb]

Monash University Criminal Justice Research Consortium (CJRC)
Seminar: Rethinking Mental Health Laws: Developing Model Frameworks [PDF 330kb]