The landmark Mental Health Bill has received Royal Assent, meaning it is now law, and will finally modernise outdated mental health legislation.
The government says the new Mental Health Act 2025 will ensure that patients with severe mental illness will be better protected and receive better care and support.
The Mental Health Act 1983 originally provided a legal framework to detain and treat people who had reached a mental health crisis point and were at risk of harm to themselves or others. But campaigners have long called for the legislation to be reformed and for mental health laws to be brought into the 21st century, and successive governments have worked on reviewing and reforming the Act.
The updated Act is designed to support NHS staff to provide more personalised care for mental health patients, and to empower those patients to “take charge of their treatment.”
It applies to England and Wales and will be phased in over 8-10 years to allow services to prepare for the changes.
Mental Health Act 2025 will ‘transform lives’
Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting commented:
“For too long, thousands of vulnerable people in mental health crises have been failed by outdated laws that stripped away their dignity and voice.
“The new Mental Health Act will transform lives by putting patients back in control of their care, tackling the unacceptable disparities that have seen black people detained at disproportionately high rates, and giving NHS staff the tools to deliver care that truly helps people recover. […].”
The Minister for Mental Health, Baroness Merron, said that it had been a “privilege” to work on the Mental Health Bill and added:
“Today we’re delivering the modernisation that patients, families and clinicians have been calling for.
“For years, patients have been let down by a mental health system that needs urgent reform. Those detained under the Mental Health Act have had too little say over their care and treatment, and who should be involved in it.
“Black people are 3.5 times more likely to be detained than their white counterparts. Autistic people and those with learning disabilities who don’t have a mental health condition have been often inappropriately detained.”
Legislative reforms were informed by lived experience
The Mental Health Bill was shaped by people with lived experience of mental health care and treatment.
Steve Gilbert OBE, who has bipolar disorder and was sectioned in 2010, acted as Vice-Chair for the Mental Health Act Review and made recommendations to the government. It follows his decade-long efforts to improve mental health services, with a focus on racial equity. He is a national expert in living experience leadership.
He says that the former Mental Health Act had “profoundly impacted” his life and that of his family, saying that his detention “stripped us of dignity and caused long-term trauma, a reality shared by many.”
Using his experiences and those of others to guide work on the new Mental Health Act 2025, he focused on improving outcomes for vulnerable individuals.
When the Bill received Royal Assent, he paid tribute “to the thousands of service users, carers and professionals who shared their stories,” including the 12 members of the Service User Carer Group who helped ensure the updated legislation delivered “dignity, autonomy and therapeutic benefit.”
The Mental Health Act 2025 also strengthens the rights of children and young people, centring their wishes and feelings in the decision-making process, ensuring they are consulted and involved, where appropriate, in decisions about their care and treatment.
The new act will also remove the right for courts to detain individuals in prison as a place of safety while they wait for a hospital bed to become available for treatment or assessment under the Mental Health Act.
Mental Health Act 2025 comes alongside ‘real improvements’
The Medical Director for Mental Health and Neurodiversity at NHS England, Dr Adrian James, said the legal reforms have been introduced in conjunction with “real improvements” being implemented across the NHS in England, citing “earlier support for young people in schools, expanding 24/7 crisis services, and piloting neighbourhood mental health centres so people can get support closer to home.”
He added:
“Together, all of these measures will help people get the right care, in the right place, at the right time.”
The Mental Health Act 2025 incorporates the four core principles that Sir Simon Wessely FRS GBE identified as needing to be reformed in his landmark Independent Review of the Mental Health Act in 2018. These were:
- choice and autonomy
- least restriction
- therapeutic benefit
- the person as an individual.
Now that the Act has received Royal Assent, the government is developing detailed guidance on the legislation before it officially comes into force.
Sir Simon Wessely, the Chair of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, at King’s College London, was pleased to see his core aims reflected in the reformed Mental Health Act and commented:
“As public attitudes towards mental illness have shifted, so must the law. And today it has. So, this is a good moment for me to thank the many campaigners, clinicians and brave individuals with lived experience of the Act who made this possible.”
The government asserted that the Mental Health Act 2025 was just one way in which it was working to transform mental health care.
As part of its 10-Year Health Plan, the government has also pledged to recruit an additional 8,500 mental health workers, increase talking therapies, rollout more mental health support teams in schools and colleges and improve access to help through the NHS App.
They are also planning to invest an additional £473 million in mental health infrastructure by 2030 to help modernise facilities, expand neighbourhood mental health services and increase crisis care capacity to prevent people reaching the point of needing to be detained. This aligns with their overall aim of shifting the focus of care from hospitals to the community.
The government says their vision “will build an NHS that is fit for the future […].”
Implementation of the Mental Health Act 2025 will depend on resources
For experts and campaigners in the sector, it is these raft of measures and investment alongside the reformed Mental Health Act 2025 which will really ensure improved experiences for mental health patients.
In a briefing developed in partnership with Mills and Reeve, NHS Confederation and NHS Providers highlight the “concern that financial challenges in the sector means that full implementation could take longer than the current draft timelines.”
Outlining key points of the reformed Act for NHS staff they agree that an update was “long overdue,” but warn:
“Successful implementation of the Act will depend on ensuring that sufficient workforce, revenue and capital are available to support an increase in community provision, improve inpatient environments and enable more opportunities for patients to have a say in their care, and to challenge decisions.”
Meanwhile, leading UK charity the Mental Health Foundation have also responded to the Mental Health Act 2025 receiving Royal Assent.
The Foundation’s Head of Research and Applied Learning, Dr David Crepaz-Keay, who has prior lived experience of being detained under the Mental Health Act 1983, said the original legislative framework was “outdated” and had been “used during its lifespan in homophobic, racist and other discriminatory ways.”
He said it was “positive” that the pledge to reform the Act and improve mental health care and treatment was being delivered on and added:
“This reform must now lead to better treatment for those in crisis, and a greater focus on support that keeps people healthy and stops them from reaching crisis point and being detained in the first place.
“Ultimately though, whether these reforms achieve the scale of change needed will be dependent on the resources the mental health sector receives.”
Training and support for mental health
First Response Training (FRT) is a leading national training provider delivering courses in subjects such as health and safety, first aid, fire safety, manual handling, food safety, mental health, health and social care and more.
An accredited Mindful Employer themselves, FRT’s specialist mental health training courses include Understanding Mental Health, Mental Health Awareness in the Workplace, Managing Stress, Anxiety and Phobias Awareness, Self-Harm Awareness and Suicide Awareness.
They can also provide qualified, approved trainers to deliver accredited Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training courses, including the Adult, Youth and Aware versions.
A trainer from FRT says:
“We believe that the general public is well aware by now that mental health is a significant issue and that more needs to be done to ensure that people receive the care and support that they need and deserve.
“We welcome the Mental Health Act 2025 becoming law and hope that it will lead to improved care, support and treatment for people experiencing mental health problems. We also hope it will mean people are empowered to make decisions about their care and treatment and that they are provided with dignity, compassion and choice.
“Organisations, schools, community groups and businesses across the UK can also take some control by undertaking training in mental health to ensure that individuals are well informed about mental health problems and are empowered to offer individuals early help and support.
“This is an essential step given that 300,000 people are lost from the workforce every year as a result of long-term mental health problems.”
Helpful resources
A brief summary of our mental health training can now be downloaded as an infographic.
We also have a number of free infographics available to download which provide simple tips for helping to manage your mental health and wellbeing. These include:
- Connect with Nature
- 8 Steps to a Good Start to the Year
- Manage Your Stress
- Managing Stress at Work
- Manage Your Anxiety
- Managing Panic Attacks
You can also download our free Guide to Mental Health Training from our website.
For more information on the training that FRT can provide, please call them today on freephone 0800 310 2300 or send an e-mail to info@firstresponsetraining.com.