The Mental Health Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025. The Act will reform the Mental Health Act 1983, and implements reforms proposed by Sir Simon Wessely in his Independent Review of the Mental Health Act in 2018.
The Mental Health Act will continue to provide clinicians with the powers to admit and treat people if they become a risk to themselves and others.
There are four guiding principles which underpin the new Act:
People should be supported to have more say in decisions about their care and treatment, even when they are detained. This includes being listened to, having their preferences respected, and being involved as much as possible in decisions that affect them.
Care and treatment should limit people’s freedom as little as possible while still keeping them safe. Compulsory powers should only be used when absolutely necessary and for the shortest time possible.
There will be an increased threshold for detention – people should only be detained if their mental health condition means that they are a risk of serious harm to themselves or others, and where treatment in detention has a reasonable prospect of helping them. Any compulsory treatment must provide a clear benefit to the person’s mental health.
People should be treated as individuals. Their personal circumstances, identity, culture, values and lived experience should be taken into account when decisions are made.
These principles will be reflected in the accompanying Code of Practice that professionals will use when implementing the Act.
Advance Choice Documents will be introduced, which will allow people to record their treatment preferences that services must consider.
The Act introduces statutory care and treatment plans and the need to record the reasons for compulsory treatment and restrictive practices to improve transparency.
Clinicians will be required to engage with patients when creating care and treatment plans and to consider their wishes and feelings, including those in their Advance Choice Document.
The new Act will replace the ‘nearest relative’ with a chosen Nominated Person to support decision-making, enabling people to appoint someone they trust to advocate for them.
Clinicians will be required to review a patient’s treatment more frequently, giving patients quicker opportunities to challenge decisions.
This Act introduces a new requirement for the responsible clinician to consult another person before discharging a patient.
The government has proposed a long-term implementation plan for the new Act, so people being detained under the Mental Health Act will not immediately be affected.
Whilst exact timelines are not yet known, it is likely to be at least several months before changes are implemented, with some changes potentially taking years.
The government is now starting to develop the ‘Code of Practice’ to accompany the Act, which will set out more detailed guidance on the Act before it comes into force.
Policy Partners Project will keep our customers’ procedures updated in line with the implementation of the new Act.
