Mental Health and Human Rights

"Mental disorders are ubiquitous and profoundly disabling, and people suffering from them frequently endure the worst conditions of life. In recent decades both mental health and human rights have emerged as areas of practice, inquiry, national policy-making, and shared international concern. Human rights monitoring and reporting are core features of public administration in most countries, and human rights law has burgeoned. Mental health also enjoys a new dignity in scholarship, international discussions and programs, mass media coverage, and political debate. Today's experts insist that it impacts on every aspect of health and human well-being, and so becomes essential to achieving human rights. It is remarkable however, that the struggle for human rights over the past two centuries largely bypassed the plight of those with mental disabilities.^ Mental health is frequently absent from routine health and social policy-making and research, and from many global health initiatives, for example, the Millennium Development Goals. Yet the impact of mental disorder is profound, not least when combined with poverty, mass trauma, and social disruption, as in many poorer countries. Stigma is widespread and mental disorders frequently go unnoticed and untreated. Even in settings where mental health has attracted attention and services have undergone reform, resources are typically scarce, inequitably distributed, and inefficiently deployed. Social inclusion of those with psychosocial disabilities languishes as a distant ideal. In practice, therefore, the international community still tends to prioritize human rights while largely ignoring mental health, which remains in the shadow of physical health programs.^ Yet not only do persons with mental disorders suffer deprivations of human rights but violations of human rights are now recognized as a major cause of mental disorder - a pattern that indicates the inextricable link between the two domains. Mental Health and Human Rights offers the first comprehensive survey of the key aspects of this interrelationship"--P. [4] of cover.