Powers and duties of psychiatrists in Australian and NZ law - a literature review

This literature review was produced in 2017 and compares all the Mental Health Acts (MHAs) in Australia and New Zealand according to the central topics that affect psychiatrists. 

It creates a framework that:

• connects the forces driving law reform with the MHAs themselves
• notes where the MHAs converge and diverge
• discusses what these comparisons mean in practice.

This framework allows a range of controversies to be addressed, and indicates some of the future directions that law reform might take.

The Literature Review was developed under the oversight of members of the Faculty of Forensic Psychiatry, both in Australia and New Zealand.