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Getting psychiatric patients to the polls in the 1992 General Election

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Martin Humphreys
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Derek Chiswick
Affiliation:
Royal Edinburgh Hospital Edinburgh EH10 5HF
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Universal suffrage has been a cornerstone of democracy in Britain since 1948. However, by application of the common law, the vote is denied to people deemed “insane” or “idiots”. In practice mentally disordered people have been, until recently, disenfranchised by section 4(3) of the Representation of the People Act 1949 which prevented recognition of a mental hospital as a place of residence for the purpose of electoral registration. Significant change was introduced by section 7 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 which applies to both England and Wales, and Scotland. This enables informal patients in mental hospitals to register for the vote provided they can complete a patient's declaration. We examined the implementation of these provisions in the 1992 general election at two hospitals in Edinburgh for people with mental illness and learning disabilities respectively.

Type
Original articles
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 1993

References

Gostin, L. (1986) Mental Health Services – Law and Practice. London: Shaw.Google Scholar
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