Contents: Principles: The limitations of the legal approach to mental health, Kathleen Jones ; The ideology of entitlement: the application of contemporary legal approaches to psychiatry, Larry O. Gostin; Unreasonable rights: mental illness and the limits of the law, Nikolas Rose; Dying with their rights on, David A. Treffert; In defence of compulsory psychiatric intervention, A.W. Clare; The 3rd way in mental health policy: negative rights, positive rights, and the convention, Philip Fennell; Principles for the protection of persons with mental illness and for the improvement of mental health care, United Nations; The rights of psychiatric patients in the light of the principles announced by the united Nations: a recognition of the right to consent to treatment?, Caroline Gendreau; Mental health law: institutionalised discrimination, T.D. Campbell; Advance directives for psychiatric care: a theoretical and practical overview for legal professionals, Elizabeth Gallagher; Putting mental health into mental health law, David B. Wexler; The Italian experience and its implications, Michele Tansella and Paul Williams; Reform of the Mental Health Act 1983: the relevance of capacity to make decisions, Michael Gunn. Process: On being sane in insane places, D.L. Rosenhan; Practices and attitudes among Swedish psychiatrists regarding the ethics of compulsory treatment, G. Kullgren, L. Jacobsson, N. Lynoee, R. Kohn and I. Levav; The 'pass-through' model of psychiatric emergency room assessment, Charles W. Lidz, Phyllis D. Coontz and Edward P. Mulvey; Coercion and commitment: understanding involuntary mental hospital admission, John Monahan, Steven K. Hoge, Charles W. Lidz, Loren H. Roth, Nancy Bennett, William Gardner and Edward P. Mulvey; Perceived coercion in mental hospital admission: pressures and process, Charles W. Lidz, Steven K. Hoge, William Gardner, Nancy S. Bennett, John Monahan, Edward P. Mulvey and Loren H. Roth; Flights of the mind, Kay Redfield Jamison; Consent a