Mental health

In allowing the appellant patient’s appeal, the Supreme Court held that it would be wrong to have a presumption that an anonymity order should be made in every case in civil proceedings in the High Court relating to a patient detained in a psychiatric hospital or otherwise subject to compulsory powers under the Mental Health Act 1983. However, in the present case, the anonymity order in place would be maintained on the basis that without it there was a very real risk that the progress the appellant had made during his long years of treatment in hospital would be put in jeopardy and his re-integration in the community, which had been an important purpose of his transfer to hospital, would not succeed.