115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. Inquiries. Execution of orders. Escape of patients. Cost of maintaining patients at State institutions. Medical certificates and reports to be evidence of certain facts. Visiting of patients. Examination of patients by students. Minister may authorize removal of patients from Zimbabwe. Patients passing through Zimbabwe. Dissolution of partnership where member is mentally disordered or intellectually handicapped. Regulations. Construction of references to mentally disordered or defective persons. Repeal of Cap. 15:06 and savings. AN ACT to consolidate and amend the law relating to the care, detention and after-care of persons who are mentally disordered or intellectually handicapped, whether for the purposes of treatment or otherwise; to provide for the establishment of various boards and the functions of such boards; to repeal the Mental Health Act [Chapter 15:06]; and to provide for matters incidental to or connected with the foregoing. [Date of commencement: 1 January 2000.] PART I P RELIMINARY 1 2 Short title and date of commencement This Act may be cited as the Mental Health Act [Chapter 15:12]. Interpretation In this Act— “Attorney-General”, in relation to any function, includes any person to whom the Attorney-General has delegated or assigned that function in terms of any law; “clinical psychologist” means a person registered as a psychologist under the Psychological Practices Act [Chapter 27:11]; “close relative”, in relation to a patient, means any of the following persons— (a) the patient’s grandparent, parent, brother, sister, child or grandchild, whether such relationship arises through blood or adoption; (b) the patient’s step-grandparent, step-parent, step-brother, step-sister, step-child or stepgrandchild; (c) where the patient is married, his spouse or his spouse’s grand-parent, parent, brother or sister; “designated”, in relation to a medical practitioner, psychiatric nurse, social worker or clinical psychologist, means named on a list prepared in terms of section one hundred and eight; “Government medical officer” means a medical practitioner employed wholly or mainly by the State; “High Court” includes a judge in chambers; “informal patient” means a person who is received as an informal patient in terms of section forty-seven; “institution” means any mental hospital which the Minister, by notice in the Gazette, has declared to be an institution for the purposes of this Act; “judge” means a judge of the High Court; “magistrate”, except in sections twenty-six, twenty-eight, twenty-nine and thirty-eight, does not include the chief magistrate or a regional magistrate; “medical certificate” means a certificate referred to in paragraph (b) of section five or paragraph (c) of subsection (2) of section eleven; “medical practitioner” means a person who is registered as a medical practitioner in terms of the Health Professions Act [Chapter 27:19]; [Definition amended by Act 6/2000] “mental hospital” means a hospital, including a hospital that forms part of a prison, for the reception and detention of two or more mentally disordered or intellectually handicapped persons; “mental hospital board” means a mental hospital board established in terms of section sixty-eight;