Information on Rules of Life The right to consult the internal rules and regulations of the institution and be informed of the explanations pertaining thereto appears among the inviolable rights provided for under article L. 3211-3 of the Public Health Code. In principle, at the time of the patient’s arrival in the treatment unit, the health manager or nurse explains the operation of the unit to them and hands over the hospital booklet for new arrivals – which in general includes the Hospitalised Patients’ Charter – and the internal rules and regulations of the unit, sometimes referred to as the “rules of life”. These documents should enable hospitalised persons to determine the rights to which they are entitled as well as providing the information useful to them during their stay, such as the services provided within the institution and the practical details of operation of the unit in which they are accommodated. However, in order to enable persons committed for psychiatric treatment to exercise their liberty, the information issued to them needs to be reliable, regularly updated and accessible. At the time of their visits to institutions, the inspectors ascertained that patients did not always have useful information concerning their stay at their disposal, either because the documents had not been handed over to them, or because they had been lost since their arrival. In order to compensate for these difficulties, certain units have taken the initiative of displaying the rules of life in each room, under a plastic cover. The CGLPL recommends that this initiative should be brought into general use. Moreover, article 1 of the regulation (arrêté) of 15th April 2008 concerning the content of new arrivals booklets in health institutions provides that these booklets shall be regularly updated and specifies that “specific written information, concerning the nature of the activities of the institution, the various different modes of treatment and the type of patients shall be provided as a supplement, insofar as necessary”. Yet, it was observed that, in the majority of health institutions, the new arrivals booklets handed over to patients were incomplete, obsolete and/or inappropriate. In the first place, new arrivals booklets handed over in hospitals contain practical information applicable to the institution as a whole, inappropriate to persons committed for psychiatric treatment without consent (activities provided, visiting times, access to television and telephone etc.). Furthermore, in general, even in public mental health institutions, the new arrivals booklets are not updated; the names of the doctors working within the units are often out of date and the applicable law is rarely or incompletely mentioned. The CGLPL recommends that specific psychiatry new arrivals booklets should be published in general hospitals. Furthermore, in order to avoid any additional cost connected with regular reprinting, detachable and easily modifiable inserts could be usefully inserted at the end of new arrivals booklets in order to enable the regular updating of certain pieces of information (names of medical staff, legislative and statutory updates). Legal Information and Advice Autonomy and taking responsibility presuppose access to greater knowledge of one’s rights and duties. Measures for the provision of general information, referred to as legal information and advice access points, have been put in place throughout the territory of France. Most of them are schemes concerned with general law, open to the public at large, others are specialised, in prisons and, since 2012, legal information and advice access points have also begun to be put in place in psychiatric institutions (in Île-de-France and the Nord and Charente departments) at the initiative of departmental councils for access to legal information and advice (Conseils départementaux de l’accès au droit). 129