Julia Neuberger: Our treatment of the mentally ill is a test of society
From a speech given by the chief executive of the King's Fund to the British Institute of Human Rights in London
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Your support makes all the difference.The European Convention on Human Rights came into effect 50 years ago. Since then there has been a considerable change in society's attitudes towards people with mental health problems, even if we are still some way from overcoming all the barriers of stigma and discrimination that persist.
Yet does the Government's draft Mental Health Bill take this into account? It is primarily about perceived risk to the public and compulsory treatment. But shouldn't a Mental Health Bill at the start of the 21st century not take on board a more proactive agenda in support of patient autonomy, patient rights, patient choice - and, crucially, the progress made around human rights?
The Bill contains powers to impose treatment on people who have capacity to decide for themselves. People who are physically ill are not forcibly treated if they don't want to be. So can there be a justification for this continuing legal discrepancy in relation to medical treatment decisions between physical and mental health?
The draft Bill also creates powers to allow for compulsory orders be imposed on people living in the community. Will this work? Research suggests that as a general rule community orders have not been proven to have any great benefit either in terms of reduced hospital admission or violent incidents, or in providing a better quality of life for the patient. What will happen, though, is that more people are likely to be drawn into the compulsory system.
The Human Rights Act gives us a really good opportunity to secure and protect the rights of people with a mental disorder, and to ensure mental health services are compliant with ECHR provisions. But to date it has had limited effect.
All of us - Cabinet Ministers, civil servants, Chief Executives, service managers, front-line workers, carers - must take responsibility for safeguarding the human rights of people with mental health problems, both through progressive legislation and through changes to how we provide services.
But ultimately that's not a test of the law or mental health services. It's actually a test of us, and the society that we want to live in.
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