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12 - Mental Health and Human Rights

from Part III - Contemporary Issues in Psychology and Human Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2020

By
Stephen P. Marks ,
Lena Verdeli  and
Sandra Willis
Edited by
Neal S. Rubin  and
Roseanne L. Flores
Neal S. Rubin
Affiliation:
Adler University
Roseanne L. Flores
Affiliation:
Hunter College, City University of New York
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Summary

Applying normative and practice-based approaches, this chapter clarifies the evolving application of human rights to mental health through the normative expansion of the right to health and the rights of persons with disabilities and the emerging psychosocial approaches to mental health services and policy. It examines the challenges mental disability poses for the full enjoyment of human rights, and the responses of the human rights framework, as well as the integration of a normative and practice-based approach to human rights and mental health. Comparing the rights defined in the Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care (MI Principles) and those in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), it demonstrates that the enumeration of rights defined in these two essential documents on mental health and human rights underscores that the mental health–specific provisions of the MI Principles add to the normative content of the corresponding articles of the CRPD and the latter provide legally binding force to the corresponding nonbinding pronouncements of the MI Principles. The conclusion proposes some guidelines for mental health practice and the application of human rights norms to mental health.

Keywords

human rightsright to healthbiomedical modelpsychosocial modelMI principles
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Human Rights , pp. 183 - 196
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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