Book contents
- Mental Health, Legal Capacity, and Human Rights
- Mental Health, Legal Capacity, and Human Rights
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Contributors
- Preface
- Foreword
- Introduction A “Paradigm Shift” in Mental Health Care
- 1 The Alchemy of Agency: Reflections on Supported Decision-Making, the Right to Health and Health Systems as Democratic Institutions
- 2 Redefining International Mental Health Care in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic
- 3 Reparation for Psychiatric Violence: A Call to Justice
- 4 Divergent Human Rights Approaches to Capacity and Consent
- 5 From Pipe Dream to Reality: A Practical Legal Approach Towards the Global Abolition of Psychiatric Coercion
- 6 The ‘Fusion Law’ Proposals and the CRPD
- 7 Contextualising Legal Capacity and Supported Decision Making in the Global South Experiences: of Homeless Women with Mental Health Issues from Chennai, India
- 8 The Potential of the Legal Capacity Law Reform in Peru to Transform Mental Health Provision
- 9 Advancing Disability Equality Through Supported Decision-Making: The CRPD and the Canadian Constitution
- 10 Decisional Autonomy and India’s Mental Healthcare Act, 2017: A Comment on Emerging Jurisprudence
- 11 Towards Resolving Damaging Uncertainties: Progress in the United Kingdom and Elsewhere
- 12 ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’: Recent Developments in Mental Health Law Reform in Zambia and Ghana
- 13 Supported Decision-Making and Legal Capacity in Kenya
- 14 Seher’s “Circle of Care” Model in Advancing Supported Decision Making in India
- 15 The Swedish Personal Ombudsman: Support in Decision-Making and Accessing Human Rights
- 16 Strategies to Achieve a Rights-Based Approach through WHO QualityRights
- 17 The Clubhouse Model: A Framework for Naturally Occurring Supported Decision Making
- 18 Mind the Gap: Researching ‘Alternatives to Coercion’ in Mental Health Care
- 19 Psychiatric Advance Directives and Supported Decision-Making: Preliminary Developments and Pilot Studies in California
- 20 Community-Based Mental Health Care Delivery with Partners In Health: A Framework for Putting the CRPD into Practice
- 21 Lived Experience Perspectives from Australia, Canada, Kenya, Cameroon and South Africa – Conceptualising the Realities
- 22 In the Pursuit of Justice: Advocacy by and for Hyper-marginalized People with Psychosocial Disabilities through the Law and Beyond
- 23 The Danish Experience of Transforming Decision-Making Models
- 24 The Use of Patient Advocates in Supporting People with Psychosocial Disabilities
- 25 Users’ Involvement in Decision-Making: Lessons from Primary Research in India and Japan
- 26 Involvement of People with Lived Experience of Mental Health Conditions in Decision-Making to Improve Care in Rural Ethiopia
- References
22 - In the Pursuit of Justice: Advocacy by and for Hyper-marginalized People with Psychosocial Disabilities through the Law and Beyond
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 August 2021
- Mental Health, Legal Capacity, and Human Rights
- Mental Health, Legal Capacity, and Human Rights
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Contributors
- Preface
- Foreword
- Introduction A “Paradigm Shift” in Mental Health Care
- 1 The Alchemy of Agency: Reflections on Supported Decision-Making, the Right to Health and Health Systems as Democratic Institutions
- 2 Redefining International Mental Health Care in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic
- 3 Reparation for Psychiatric Violence: A Call to Justice
- 4 Divergent Human Rights Approaches to Capacity and Consent
- 5 From Pipe Dream to Reality: A Practical Legal Approach Towards the Global Abolition of Psychiatric Coercion
- 6 The ‘Fusion Law’ Proposals and the CRPD
- 7 Contextualising Legal Capacity and Supported Decision Making in the Global South Experiences: of Homeless Women with Mental Health Issues from Chennai, India
- 8 The Potential of the Legal Capacity Law Reform in Peru to Transform Mental Health Provision
- 9 Advancing Disability Equality Through Supported Decision-Making: The CRPD and the Canadian Constitution
- 10 Decisional Autonomy and India’s Mental Healthcare Act, 2017: A Comment on Emerging Jurisprudence
- 11 Towards Resolving Damaging Uncertainties: Progress in the United Kingdom and Elsewhere
- 12 ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’: Recent Developments in Mental Health Law Reform in Zambia and Ghana
- 13 Supported Decision-Making and Legal Capacity in Kenya
- 14 Seher’s “Circle of Care” Model in Advancing Supported Decision Making in India
- 15 The Swedish Personal Ombudsman: Support in Decision-Making and Accessing Human Rights
- 16 Strategies to Achieve a Rights-Based Approach through WHO QualityRights
- 17 The Clubhouse Model: A Framework for Naturally Occurring Supported Decision Making
- 18 Mind the Gap: Researching ‘Alternatives to Coercion’ in Mental Health Care
- 19 Psychiatric Advance Directives and Supported Decision-Making: Preliminary Developments and Pilot Studies in California
- 20 Community-Based Mental Health Care Delivery with Partners In Health: A Framework for Putting the CRPD into Practice
- 21 Lived Experience Perspectives from Australia, Canada, Kenya, Cameroon and South Africa – Conceptualising the Realities
- 22 In the Pursuit of Justice: Advocacy by and for Hyper-marginalized People with Psychosocial Disabilities through the Law and Beyond
- 23 The Danish Experience of Transforming Decision-Making Models
- 24 The Use of Patient Advocates in Supporting People with Psychosocial Disabilities
- 25 Users’ Involvement in Decision-Making: Lessons from Primary Research in India and Japan
- 26 Involvement of People with Lived Experience of Mental Health Conditions in Decision-Making to Improve Care in Rural Ethiopia
- References
Summary
Disabled advocates’ work has resulted in many domestic and international laws enshrining equal rights to access, opportunity, and inclusion, yet implementation lags far behind. Even where disability rights laws carry force, disabled people at the margins of the margins face appalling human rights violations, many deriving from social and legal structures designed to enact harm on marginalized, exploited, and targeted communities. Yet even laws meant to protect disabled people in theory often enable abuse and harm in reality, such as guardianship and involuntary commitment laws that may contravene the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Additionally, ableist oppression does not impact all disabled people equally, both across different disabilities, and among disabled people differentiated by race, gender, class, sexuality, language, or nation.
In this chapter, we provide an overview of existing U.S. and international legal frameworks governing rights, freedoms, and legal capacity for people with psychosocial disabilities, and then discuss applications of those laws and policies in current contexts. In both sections, we describe harms disabled people experience in the United States, ways in which legal structures enable or fail to prevent those harms, and potential avenues for legal and nonlegal advocacy. We highlight ways in which current law fails to adequately recognize people with psychosocial disabilities as full persons with autonomy and dignity.
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- Mental Health, Legal Capacity, and Human Rights , pp. 332 - 348Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
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