Association for Behavioural Healthcare (ABH)

The Association for Behavioral Healthcare (ABH) has been the leading advocacy organization in Massachusetts’ mental health and addiction services arena. Fighting for high-quality, community-based care for families and individuals with mental illness, addiction and substance-use disorders, ABH provides leadership and statewide coordination on important public policy, financing, preferred clinical models and quality assurance issues. ABH is a statewide association representing over eighty community-based mental health and addiction treatment provider organizations.  

 

Organisation

Address: 251 West Central Street, Suite 21 Natick, MA 01760

Country: United States of America

Mental Health Advocacy Service

The Mental Health Advocacy Service (MHAS) is a statewide specialist service of Legal Aid NSW. We provide free legal information, advice and assistance about mental health law. They help people who have been involuntarily admitted to a hospital, people appearing before the Guardianship Division of NCAT and relatives and friends are also welcome to call us for advice. The MHAS can help by

• Providing advice on what is required for appeals against refusal to be discharged from a mental health facility prior to a Mental Health inquiry being conducted
• Providing legal assistance in response to applications, or revocations, of financial management orders;
• Giving legal advice over the telephone with regards to legal implications of the Mental Health Act and the NSW Trustee and Guardian Act;
• Conducting appointments for people wishing to come and speak with a lawyer.

 

Location

Our service is located at the Burwood office, and is available from 9am to 5pm.

Contact us

You can telephone for an appointment to come and speak to a lawyer at our Burwood office on . Or we can provide information and advice over the telephone.

Please contact MHAS as soon as possible if you want representation for a community treatment order or an appeal.

You may telephone the MHAS if you are not sure about what is happening to you. We will pay for the call if you are outside Sydney.

Lawyers from MHAS, or private lawyers (arranged by MHAS), attend each hospital in NSW that has involuntary patients. If you are seeing the Tribunal, a lawyer will come to see you first. You do not have to make a request to see the lawyer.

 

Organisation

Address: 74-76 Burwood Road, Burwood

The Mental Health Review Tribunal

 

Organisation

The Mental Health Review Tribunal

The Mental Health Review Tribunal is a specialist quasi-judicial body constituted under the Mental Health Act 2007. It has a wide range of powers that enable it to conduct mental health inquiries, make and review orders, and to hear some appeals, about the treatment and care of people with a mental illness. The Tribunal conducts hearings in hospitals and community health centres. The Tribunal conducts hearings for people living outside these areas either by video conference or by telephone. The Tribunal has a wide jurisdiction, and conducts both civil and forensic hearings. In its civil hearings, the Tribunal may:

• Conduct mental health inquiries and make Involuntary Patient Orders authorising the continued involuntary detention of a person in a mental health facility;
• Review involuntary patients in mental health facilities, usually every three or six months, and in appropriate cases every twelve months
• Review voluntary patients in mental health facilities, usually every twelve months
• Hear appeals against an authorised medical officer’s refusal to discharge an involuntary patient
• Make, vary and revoke Community Treatment Orders
• Hear appeals against a Magistrate’s decision to make a community treatment order
• Approve the use of ECT for involuntary patients
• Determine if voluntary patients have consented to ECT
• Approve surgery on a patient detained in a mental health facility
• Approve special medical treatment (sterilisation)
• Make and revoke orders under the NSW Trustee and Guardian Act 2009 for a person’s financial affairs to be managed by the NSW Trustee.

The Tribunal also reviews the cases of all forensic patients who have been found not guilty by reason of mental illness, who have been found unfit to be tried or who have been transferred from prison to hospital because of a mental illness. The Tribunal’s decisions can involve the consideration of quite complex issues, and can impact directly on people’s lives, health and liberty. In making its decisions, the Tribunal seeks to balance several sets of often competing rights - the individual’s right to liberty and safety and to freedom from unnecessary intervention, the individual’s right to treatment, protection and care, and the right of the community to safety and protection. Given the importance of these decisions, it is essential that the Tribunal receives the very best evidence available when hearing applications and making its decisions. 

 

Organisation

Address: Building 40 Digby Road Gladesville Hospital Gladesville NSW 2111

Postal Address: PO Box 2019 Boronia Park NSW 2111

Email: mhrt@doh.health.nsw.gov.au