Rights of the patient vs. rights of the public in the "Treatment of the Mentally Ill Law--1991".

The new Israeli "Treatment of the Mentally Ill Law--1991" pays much attention to the protection of patients from unnecessary hospitalization in mental hospitals and to defining the rights and duties of patients who have been hospitalized, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. The question, however, is whether the rights of the public to be protected from dangerous patients were not sacrificed for the sake of the protection of the rights of the individual patient. The new law protects the rights of the patient in two main ways. First, it defines strictly and clearly the grounds for which involuntary hospitalization is permitted and lists the rights of the hospitalized patient. Secondly, it specifies clearly the procedure for the issue of a hospitalization order and distributes the power to issue such an order among various administrative bodies. The psychiatric committee is mainly a controller body to which appeals can be made on decisions of the District Psychiatrist or of directors of mental hospitals. Entrusting such a body with original administrative functions, such as the issuing of hospitalization orders for long periods, is in our opinion a conceptual mistake. Hospitalization orders through judicial proceedings are then discussed. Whenever the conditions specified in section 9 are fulfilled, the District Psychiatrist is entitled to issue a hospitalization order. The District Psychiatrist is not obliged, however, according to the new law, to do it. On this point we have some reservations.