MEDICAL AND LEGAL ISSUES OF OBSERVING THE RIGHTS OF A PERSON WITH A MENTAL ILLNESS WHO HAS BECOME A PARTICIPANT IN...

There is no health without mental health. The rich links between mind, body and the environment have been well-documented for decades. As the third decade of the millennium begins, nowhere in the world has achieved parity between mental and physical health and this remains a significant human development challenge. An important message within that collective failure is that without addressing human rights seriously, any investment in mental health will not be effective. Attacks on universal human rights principles threaten the physical, political, social, and economic environment, and actively undermine the struggle for positive mental health and well-being. Mental health systems worldwide are dominated by a reductionist biomedical model that uses medicalization to justify coercion as a systemic practice and qualifies the diverse human responses to harmful underlying and social determinants (such as inequalities, discrimination, and violence) as "disorders" that need treatment. In such a context, the main principles of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities are actively undermined and neglected. This approach ignores evidence that effective investments should target populations, relationships, and other determinants, rather than individuals and their brains. How that dominance is overcome requires transformative human rights action. However, action that focuses only on strengthening failing mental health-care systems and institutions is not compliant with the right to health. The locus of the action must be recalibrated to strengthen communities and expand evidence-based practice that reflects a diversity of experiences. Such community-led recalibration enables the necessary social integration and connection required to promote mental health and well-being more effectively and humanely.