Professor Jill Peay, NAB6.11. This course will be taught jointly with staff from King's College London. Sessions in the Michaelmas Term will take place at King's College London in the Strand.

For LLM students and MSc Criminal Justice Policy.

This course is capped at 30 students. Students must apply through Graduate Course Choice on LSEforYou.

The course is designed to integrate a practical and theoretical understanding of mental health law, from the perspectives of law and mental health sciences. It tries to provide students with a broad conceptual understanding of the particular problems encountered in the application of mental health law.

The introduction to the course is concerned with the context of mental health law and covers issues relating to legal and clinical terminology, basic legal structures and the interaction between law and psychiatry. The remainder of the term is devoted to civil mental health law and looks at; issues of capacity, compulsory treatment both in hospital and in the community, and discharge from hospital. We also touch on issues of law, rights and discrimination. The second term focuses more on issues relating to mentally disordered offenders; it reviews relevant issues of criminal law and sentencing, and covers materials relating to the relationship between mental disorder and offending. Finally we look at issues of mental health law, policy and reform.

Weekly seminars of 2 hours for 10 weeks in the MT, 10 in LT and up to two in the ST.

One essay of 2,000 words to be submitted by the end of term.

B Hale (2010) Mental Health Law 5^th Edition, Sweet and Maxwell; and J. Peay (2010) Mental Health and Crime, Routledge. As a general textbook we recommend P Bartlett & R Sandland, Mental Health Law. Policy and Practice,  Oxford University Press.  A new edition is forthcoming in 2011/12.

A three-hour examination that counts for (100%).