Mental health law in Scotland: guide to named persons

A named person is someone who can look after your interests if you are cared for or treated under mental health legislation. This guide provides information to help you understand your rights.


Named Person

A named person is someone who can look after your interests if you are cared for or treated under mental health legislation.

This guide is one of a series of guides produced by the Scottish Government to provide information to you on mental health law in Scotland. We provide information to help you understand your rights.

This guide refers to the role of named person as set out in the main piece of mental health law in Scotland. This is the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003. We refer to it as 'the law' throughout this guide. You do not need to understand anything about law in order to use this guide.

The phrase 'named person' has also been used in other laws. For clarity, the named person role in relation to services for children set out in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 is a different role and is not covered by this guide.

In this guide, we refer to the Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland (MHTS) as 'the Tribunal'. However, from 2019, the Mental Health Chamber of the First Tier Tribunal will adopt the role of the Tribunal and reference to the Tribunal should be interpreted accordingly.

We have taken account of changes that have been made to mental health law in Scotland up to October 2018.

Contact

Email: Dan Curran

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