Not as Straight-Forward as that It’s Just ‘An Added Fuss’ – Untangling How Indian Psychiatrists Construe Domestic Human Rights Legislation

Authors

  • Alena Kahle Sociology of Law Department, Lund University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.19164/ijmhcl.27.1199

Abstract

After its ratification of the 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD), the Indian government proceeded to work through a list of laws from various fields – employment, housing, healthcare, personal status – that would need to be amended to guarantee the rights in the UNCRPD. Regarding the healthcare of persons with mental illness, the law-drafters deemed it insufficient to merely amend the existing law and proceeded to draft a new, innovative mental healthcare law. When the Mental Healthcare Act (MHA) was passed in 2017, responses were strongly polarised: On the one hand, it was lauded for staying true to the vision of the UNCRPD (Duffy & Kelly, 2019), while on the other hand, especially psychiatrists heavily criticised that they anticipated the law would adversely affect their ability to treat patients

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Published

2021-12-23

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Section

Articles and Comment