Mental Health Review Board

The Mental Health Review Board (MHRB) is an independent administrative tribunal that reviews panel hearings under the Mental Health Act. The MHRB's mandate is based on involuntary psychiatric patients’ periodic rights to fair and timely reviews of their loss of liberty.

The board conducts hearings to review and decide whether persons detained in or through any designated mental health facility in BC should continue to be detained based on criteria in the Act. The board's function is to ensure that patients admitted by physicians and detained involuntarily in provincial mental health facilities have access to an objective review process.

When a patient, or someone acting on a patient’s behalf, submits a request for review of a physician’s decision to detain a patient involuntarily, the board's chair must designate a review panel if a hearing has not been held since his/her last certificate or renewal certificate.

After a hearing, the review panel then decides whether a patient should be discharged from involuntary status based on criteria specified in the Mental Health Act. These decisions usually involve balancing serious and competing issues such as freedom of the individual and protection of the public.