Professor Matthew Sadlier:

It also comes back to my initial point about ambiguity. The concept of psychosocial assessment is being put into legislation, but are you talking about psychodynamics, cognitive behavioural therapy, rational emotive behaviour therapy or Lacanian, Freudian or Jungian therapy? What is meant by your analysis? These kind of vague terms are being put in that are understood among clinicians but should not really be in legal frameworks, which will open up doors for contesting what a psychosocial assessment is. It then ends up with Supreme Court rulings trying to define these things. We are better off not having these words in legislation and allowing care to proceed. Every patient gets a psychosocial assessment as part of their assessments, but I am not sure it should be in legislation.