As the World Commemorates Mental Health day, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has released new guidelines noting that despite the existence of legislation against abuse in many countries, mentally ill individuals still face involuntary hospitalization, forced treatment, and psychological and emotional abuse while in care.
In a new joint statement that the organization has released together with the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR), countries are asked to reform legislation in order to end human rights abuses and increase access to quality mental health care.
“Mental health is an integral and essential component of the right to health,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “This new guidance will support countries to make the changes needed to provide quality mental health care that assists a person’s recovery and respects their dignity, empowering people with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities to lead full and healthy lives in their communities,” he added.
While it’s a common practice for sufferers of mental illness to be secluded and forced into care, the new guidelines suggest an end to such practices saying a growing body of evidence has found coercive practices to negatively impact physical and mental health, often compounding a person’s existing condition while alienating them from their support systems.
The guidance proposes legislative provisions that require free and informed consent as the basis of all mental health-related interventions. It also provides guidance on how more complex and challenging cases can be handled in legislation and policies without recourse to coercive practices.
In addition, the new guidelines push for community-based mental healthcare as recent research done in various countries has found community-based intervention to give better healing results. The new guidelines therefore recommend that countries adopt legislation that gradually replaces psychiatric institutions with inclusive community support systems and mainstream services, such as income support, housing assistance, and peer support networks.
While commenting about these guidelines, Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said mental health services need to be truly responsive to the needs and dignity of the individual. As a result, he says they have developed a checklist that countries can use to evaluate themselves whether their local mental health-related legislation is compliant with international human rights obligations.
However, apart from reforms in the mainstream legal frameworks, experts at WHO also highlight the importance of consulting persons with lived experience and their representative organizations as being a critical part of helping those battling mental illness to recover or to live a better quality of life, as well as the importance of public education and awareness on rights-based issues.
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