Five human rights changes in the Mental Health Act 2025

The new Mental Health Act passed into law on 18th December 2025 after being first introduced to UK Parliament in November 2024. We want to share five key changes to the law and what they mean for human rights.

BIHR will be hosting a webinar for practitioners and policy professionals on 20th January 9.30 - 10.45, with guests sharing legal and lived experience perspectives on human rights approaches to implementing this new legislation – sign up below.

Find out about BIHR's policy work on the Mental Health Bill Sign up for our webinar on 20th January - limited places available!

The Mental Health Act 2025 makes changes to the Mental Health Act 1983 (MHA), the main law covering the assessment, treatment, and rights of people experiencing mental distress in England and Wales. The process of implementing these changes will take place over a number of years. We know that the Human Rights Act is the foundation of current and future mental health legislation, including how the law is written as well as how it is put into practice day-to-day.

The new Mental Health Act 2025 contains lots of changes to the way the MHA will apply going forward, many of which will engage people’s human rights when they are in vulnerable situations. Here are five important changes to be aware of, and some human rights considerations as we move towards implementation.

Read our explainer about how laws are made

1. Extending Human Rights Act duties to independent mental health care providers

The Mental Health Act 2025 contains an amendment which extends the legal duties of the Human Rights Act to private care providers when they are providing certain services that have been arranged or paid for by public authorities. This includes services that are delivering aftercare under the MHA; inpatient mental health care arranged or paid for by an NHS body; or Local Authority-arranged community care under the Mental Health Care and Treatment (Scotland) Act.

BIHR, along with care sector partners, supported this change which clarifies the law for private providers and crucially ensures equal human rights protections for people receiving mental health care.

Find out more about BIHR’s work to support this amendment Find out more about our new Open Course: Community Mental Health Care and Human Rights – deadline for applications 29th January

2. Changes for people with a learning disability and autistic people

Under the new Mental Health Act 2025, people would not be able to be detained for treatment in hospital just because they’re autistic or have a learning disability – except for people who have been charged with or convicted of a criminal offence.

In BIHR’s submission to the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR), co-produced with Lived Experience Experts from our RITES Committee, we highlighted how this would engage the right to liberty (Article 5) because it changes who can be deprived of their liberty under the Mental Health Act and why. We also highlighted the right to be free from discrimination (Article 14), because the same legislative change is not being made for people in the justice system, which can only be done if it is objectively and reasonably justified.

This change has been the subject of much debate, with warnings about the ‘unintended consequences’ which might see people with a learning disability and autistic people being detained through different routes, such as under the Mental Capacity Act 2005, diversion into the criminal justice system, or by being given mental health diagnoses inappropriately. This change will also need to be accompanied by well-resourced community learning disability and autism services.

Read our co-produced submission to the JCHR on the Mental Health Bill

3. Strengthening choice over treatment

The new Mental Health Act 2025 introduces Advance Choice Documents, requiring NHS England and Integrated Care Boards to make information available and help people to create them. An Advance Choice Document is a written statement setting out a person’s decisions, wishes and feelings, to be referred to if, in the future, admission to hospital is being considered or they are detained, and they lack capacity to make the relevant decisions. Clinicians would have to have regard for people’s Advance Choice Documents when providing medical treatment under the MHA.

Everyone, including people who lack capacity to make decisions, have the right to a private life (Article 8), which includes autonomy over treatment decisions. This is a non-absolute right, meaning our autonomy can sometimes be limited, but only if it is lawful to do so, for example, under the Mental Health Act; it is for a legitimate aim, like to protect your other rights; and it is a proportionate way of meeting that aim having actively explored less restrictive alternatives. Advance Choice Documents may provide a proactive way to ensure that our wishes and feelings about how we would like to be treated are made clearer, however again, practitioners need support to ensure this change is as positive as intended, and in line with people’s legally protected human rights.

4. Removing police stations as places of safety

In an emergency, people experiencing a mental health crisis might be taken to a place of safety until an assessment under the Mental Health Act can take place. This is usually a hospital, but can be a police station. This will change under Mental Health Act reform, removing police stations and prison cells as places of safety.

Being held in inappropriate places for long periods of time may engage the right to private life (Article 8) which protects our wellbeing, or even the right to be free from inhuman and degrading treatment (Article 3) which protects us from serious harm. In our submission to the JCHR, one of BIHR’s Lived Experience Experts flagged that existing places of safety in hospitals, also known as S.136 suites, are already over-subscribed, and alternative provision must be secured for this change to achieve the intended benefits.

Read our co-produced submission to the JCHR on the Mental Health Bill

5. Boosting support for people in hospital

When someone is admitted to hospital under the Mental Health Act, the people around them also matter. The new Mental Health Act 2025 replaces the nearest relative role with a new nominated person. Instead of a prescriptive list of who will be someone’s nearest relative, a nominated person is chosen by the patient when they have capacity to do so, and they have rights and responsibilities in relation to the patient’s care and treatment. The new law also creates an ‘opt out’ system for independent mental health advocacy for all detained patients and extends the offer of independent mental health advocacy to people who are in hospital but not detained under the MHA, also known as informal patients.

These changes are intended to give people more support to have their voices heard when receiving mental health care, engaging their right to private life (Article 8) which protects our autonomy and involvement in treatment decisions. But again, these changes need resourcing and practical support to ensure they deliver on these important outcomes.

What's next?

Crucially, the work of MHA reform does not stop now the Bill has passed into law, it has only just begun.

We need to learn the lessons from the Human Rights Act, which 20 years on has still not been fully implemented across the UK. MHA reform is not just about legislative change – it’s has to also be about proper implementation, underpinned by human rights principles. This must be guided by the expertise of people with lived experience of the mental health system: people who have been detained, families and carers, advocates, and practitioners.

We want to see support for those working with the MHA on a daily basis to ensure it is applied thoughtfully, with checks and balances in place to curb excessive powers over people with mental health needs. We also want to see investment in community support, with a view to improving mental health on a broader scale and working preventatively to reduce the likelihood of mental health crises and compulsory hospital admission altogether.

If MHA reform is going to address the problems we have been seeing for years - more and more people being detained, certain restrictions being disproportionately applied to Black and minoritised communities, inappropriate care for autistic people and people with a learning disability – careful, rights-respecting implementation will be key to this.

Want to find out more about human rights in relation to the new Mental Health Act? Register for our event

Join BIHR and guest speakers on 20th January 9.30 – 10.45 to find out more about the Mental Health Act 2025 at our upcoming webinar: The New Mental Health Act & Human Rights: Information Session

We’ll hear from legal and lived experience experts sharing their perspectives on the Bill, thinking about what will be needed to ensure MHA reform has human rights at its core.

Find out more and book your place here

What's next for BIHR?

The MHA Code of Practice, which gives guidance to professionals on how they should carry out their responsibilities under the MHA, will be the next area of focus for BIHR’s work on MHA reform, where we will be pushing for implementation support which is grounded in the legal rights and duties of our Human Rights Act.