New South Wales Consolidated Acts

MENTAL HEALTH ACT 2007 - SECT 53

53 Determination of applications for community treatment orders

(1) A Magistrate or the Tribunal is, on an application for a community treatment order, to determine whether the affected person is a person who should be subject to the order.

(2) For that purpose, the Magistrate or Tribunal is to consider the following:

(a) a treatment plan for the affected person proposed by the declared mental health facility that is to implement the proposed order,

(b) if the affected person is subject to an existing community treatment order, a report by the psychiatric case manager of the person as to the efficacy of that order,

(c) a report as to the efficacy of any previous community treatment order for the affected person,

(d) any other information placed before the Magistrate or Tribunal.

(3) The Magistrate or Tribunal may make a community treatment order for an affected person if the Magistrate or Tribunal determines that:

(a) no other care of a less restrictive kind, that is consistent with safe and effective care, is appropriate and reasonably available to the person and that the affected person would benefit from the order as the least restrictive alternative consistent with safe and effective care, and

(b) a declared mental health facility has an appropriate treatment plan for the affected person and is capable of implementing it, and

(c) if the affected person has been previously diagnosed as suffering from a mental illness, the affected person has a previous history of refusing to accept appropriate treatment.

(3A) If the affected person has within the last 12 months been the subject of a community treatment order, the Tribunal is not required to make a determination under subsection (3) (c) but must be satisfied that the person is likely to continue in or to relapse into an active phase of mental illness if the order is not granted.

(4) A Magistrate may not make a community treatment order unless the Magistrate is of the opinion that the person is a mentally ill person.

(5) For the purposes of this section, a person has a "previous history of refusing to accept appropriate treatment" if the following are satisfied:

(a) the affected person has previously refused to accept appropriate treatment,

(b) when appropriate treatment has been refused, there has been a relapse into an active phase of mental illness,

(c) the relapse has been followed by mental or physical deterioration justifying involuntary admission to a mental health facility (whether or not there has been such an admission),

(d) care and treatment following involuntary admission resulted, or could have resulted, in an amelioration of, or recovery from, the debilitating symptoms of a mental illness or the short-term prevention of deterioration in the mental or physical condition of the affected person.

(6) The Tribunal or Magistrate must not specify a period longer than 12 months as the period for which a community treatment order is in force.

(7) In determining the duration of a community treatment order, the Tribunal or Magistrate must take into account the estimated time required:

(a) to stabilise the condition of the affected person, and

(b) to establish, or re-establish, a therapeutic relationship between the person and the person’s psychiatric case manager.