Treatment Without Consent: Law, Psychiatry and the Treatment of Mentally Disordered People Since 1845

Phil Fennell Routledge, £50, pp 356 ISBN 0 415 07787 7

Nearly 50 years after the Nuremberg Code set modern rules for ethical standards in medical research and practice, the issue of how to treat mentally disordered people in an ethically acceptable manner still causes controversy. Phil Fennell's book provides an excellent overview of the history of treatment without consent and the importance attached to first person voluntary informed consent in medical practice. It describes how drugs have replaced mechanical restraint, with the notable exception of electroconvulsive therapy. Not coincidentally perhaps, Fennell …