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Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland

Open-knowledge reference entry

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ16933375 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland is a tribunal of the Scottish Government to hear applications for, and appeals against, Compulsory Treatment Order, and appeals against Short Term Detention Certificates made under the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003, and other matters in relation to that Act, for example, appeals against Compulsion and Restriction Orders.

History

The Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland was established on 5 October 2005, under the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003.

Its headquarters are located in Hamilton, although it has staff who work throughout Scotland.

Controversy

The Mental Health Tribunal has been criticised regarding its opacity and its authority. In 2009, WikiLeaks published a membership list which had previously been hosted on the Tribunal's website but later removed, along with several observations to this effect.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland” is open-knowledge reference entry. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mental, Health and Tribunal, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2003, 2005, 2009—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2005. For this dossier, Mental, Health and Tribunal is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “open-knowledge reference entry” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16933375. VIAF identifies the subject as 125735044. The Library of Congress control number is n2010183441. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003, 2005 and 2009.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland primary sources, Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland archive and Mental research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.