Mental Health In Australia Essay

Topic 4- Mental Health Laws are Discriminatory and should be abolished

Mental health laws have historically been centred of controversial discourse and especially since the development of international human rights demanding greater recognition of the legal capacity of people suffering mental illness. In the 1980s, a significant legal reform emerged in the country with the call for de-institutionalisation of mental health patients. Since then, the law in this area has been slowly evolving into a ‘rights-based’ framework seeking to redress the detriment caused by unregulated medical power and large-scale institutionalisation for the treatment of mental health patients.

However, the current form of the law in each Australian state and territory is far from achieving the international recommendations for the protection of human rights of people with mental health illness. Australian laws allow the involuntary physical restraint, detention and treatment of those deemed to have severe mental health issues. This is generally determined by a Psychiatrist team- or tribunal- acting as a substitute decision maker, who under the law has vast powers to impose unwanted medical treatments that can include serious and irreversible interventions such as Electroconvulsive Therapy or

This, recommends the CRPD, can be achieved under a simple and clear framework that recognises the equal right of people with mental disabilities to retain medical control of their illness by enjoying a ‘presumption of capacity’, free from discriminatory assumptions and with supportive services that promote the exercise of their legal capacity to opt or refuse treatment. However, it can be argued that Australia has failed to achieve this essential principle despite being a signatory of the Convention with reporting obligations for over ten