Human rights

There were two stages in the test defining the duty of the state under Art 2 to take steps to prevent persons killing themselves, specifically in the context of a detained patient in a mental hospital. The first was to decide whether the defendant had the requisite knowledge, actual or constructive, of a “real and immediate risk to life” from self harm. The second was whether the defendant failed to do all that could reasonably have been expected of it to avoid or prevent that risk.

The test depended not only on what the relevant authority had known but also what it ought to have known. The relevant knowledge was what they had known or ought to have known at the time and the court would have to warn itself against the dangers of hindsight. The authorities were clear that there was a high threshold to be crossed before the test was satisfied. The threshold that the claimant would have