Promise of dignity

The new Mental Health Care Bill is more humane in its approach than previous laws and has provisions that give the mentally ill a degree of autonomy.

- Divya Trivedi

THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIVE LAW ON mental health was first realised in October 2007 when India ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The existing Mental Health Act of 1987 was only a slight improvement on the colonial Indian Lunacy Act of 1912, which focussed on protecting the “rights of the sane not to be judged insane [sic]” or the mentally ill who were condemned to spend the rest of their lives behind closed walls in institutions. But it upheld the regressive provisions of the Lunacy Act such as “to protect society from the presence of mentally ill persons who have become or might become a danger or nuisance to others”. Whereas the 1987 Act focussed on institutionalisation, the new Mental Health Care Bill talks of community care and individualised treatment.

Even as activists and psychiatrists have expressed reservations on the efficacy of the new law for separate reasons, there is no denying that it is more humane in its approach than previous laws. One of the prime concerns of persons living with mental illness is the degree of autonomy that the Bill would provide for them. A major portion of the Bill revolves around ways to protect, promote and fulfil the rights of persons with mental illness “during delivery of mental health care services”. It assures the right of access in each district to good and affordable mental health care for all without discrimination and lays stress on bringing the services on a par with those available in the general health system.