• UGI USER
  • Feb 21, 2023
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Mental Healthcare Act, 2017

News: The Mental Healthcare Act (MHA) was violated by numerous Mental Healthcare Institutions (MHIs) in India, which prompted the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to express concern.

 

  • The NHRC claims that MHIs are “illegally” holding patients after they have recovered, which not only violates Article 21 but also shows that governments are failing to fulfil their obligations under the numerous international covenants relating to the rights of people with disabilities that India has ratified.
  • Prior to MHA 2017, there was the Mental Healthcare Act of 1987, which gave priority to institutionalising mentally ill persons and did not grant any patient rights.
  • The Act gave judicial officials and mental health facilities excessive power to approve long-stay admissions, frequently against the informed consent and wishes of the individual.
  • As a result, many people are still being forcedfully admitted into and kept in mental health facilities.
  • It embodied the philosophy of the 1912 Indian Lunacy Act, passed during the colonial era, which connected criminality and insanity.
  • In institutions known as asylums, “abnormal” and “unproductive” behaviour was examined as a personal phenomena, severing the person from society. The intervention’s goal is to “recover” by addressing an underlying deficit or “abnormality”
  • The MHA eliminated the clinical legacy associated with asylums in 2017.
  • The definition of mental illness according to this Act is “a substantial disorder of thinking, mood, perception, orientation, or memory that gravely impairs judgement, behaviour, capacity to recognise reality, or ability to meet the usual demands of life, mental conditions associated with alcohol and drug abuse.”
  • Additionally, it guarantees patients’ access to facilities like sheltered and supported housing as well as rehabilitation programmes in the home, community, and hospital.
  • It controls both the utilisation of neurosurgical procedures and PMI (person with mental illness) research.