MENTAL DISORDERS AND TREATMENT (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

5.55 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health (Dr Sheng Nam Chin): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Sir, the present Mental Disorders and Treatment Ordinance (Chapter 145), as amended in 1957 by the Mental Disorders and Treatment (Amendment) Ordinance, enabled police officers to apprehend persons believed to be mentally ill and to have them admitted to a mental hospital for observation.

It has been found in practice that an increasing number of mentally ill persons are taken by the relatives or others direct to a doctor in a Government hospital for examination and treatment. Unfortunately, the existing Ordinance does not allow a medical officer in a Government hospital or, for that matter, a private practitioner in the City or rural areas to send any person believed by him to be mentally ill to a mental hospital for examination and treatment. Therefore, doctors have had to refer the relatives of such persons to the nearest police station for action to be taken by a police officer under the powers provided in section 32 of the Ordinance.

This Bill amends the present Ordinance to enable a medical practitioner, including a medical officer, to send persons believed to be mentally ill direct to a mental hospital for observation and for treatment. To simplify and facilitate the examination of persons believed to be mentally ill, the Bill also provides for such mentally ill persons found by the police to be taken to a doctor of a Government hospital. It will be for the doctor to decide whether the patient should be sent to the mental hospital for observation. This latter provision is also based on the precept that the doctor and not a police officer should decide whether a compulsory psychiatric examination is required in any suspected case of mental disease. Not only will such a medical examination serve to establish whether treatment should be therapeutic or psychiatric, but by ensuring examination by two doctors prior to admission to a mental hospital, it will provide a satisfactory safeguard for the patient himself.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole Assembly.

Assembly immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. -[Dr Sheng Nam Chin].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed.