BACKGROUND The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) was introduced in 2007 to protect vulnerable individuals who lack capacity to make decisions for themselves and to provide a legal framework for professionals to assess incapacity. The impact of the MCA on clinical practice is not known. This study aims to evaluate how frequently mental capacity is assessed in psychiatric inpatients, whether the cri...

In this Act: 1. the term patient is used of a person who uses health care services or is otherwise an object of them; 2. the terms health care and medical care mean measures taken by health care professionals or in a health care unit in order to assess the state of health of a person or to restore or maintain it. 3. the term health care professionals means persons referred to in section 2 of th...

In South Asia, general hospital psychiatric units (GHPUs) have developed as an alternative to mental hospitals for the provision of comprehensive mental health services, training and research. GHPUs provide clinical care for all types of patients, including those with severe mental illnesses (SMIs). However, psychosocial rehabilitation is often neglected in GHPUs, partly because of the predomin...

BACKGROUND The development of hospital service areas (HSAs) using small area analysis has been useful in examining variation in medical and surgical care; however, the techniques of small area analysis are underdeveloped in understanding psychiatric admission rates. We sought to develop these techniques in order to understand the relationship between psychiatric bed supply and admission rates i...