One Proposed Legal Mechanism for Regulating Behavior Control

Abstract

As the culminating chapter in the “law and therapy” section of this book, the present chapter will review briefly certain key concerns in the area, will introduce a few new ones, and will discuss the author’s involvement in drafting a proposed administrative model for regulating behavior modification in Florida institutions for the mentally retarded. While the law relating to the mentally retarded and other developmentally disabled persons sometimes differs from the law relating to the mentally ill, the model developed here seems generally capable of being extended to other clinical populations as well as to forms of behavior control other than traditional behavior modification. Thus, the proposed administrative model is an appropriate vehicle for our discussion in this chapter.