India’s Mental Healthcare Act, 2017

Abstract

India’s Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 received Presidential assent on 7 April 2017 and was commenced on 29 May 2018. The Act seeks explicitly to align India’s mental health legislation with the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (2006). Key provisions of the new legislation cover ‘preliminary’ matters and definitions; ‘mental illness and capacity to make mental healthcare and treatment decisions’; ‘advance directive’; ‘nominated representative’; ‘rights of persons with mental illness’; ‘duties of appropriate government’; ‘Central Mental Health Authority’; ‘State Mental Health Authority’; ‘finance, accounts and audit’; ‘mental health establishments’; ‘Mental Health Review Boards’; ‘admission, treatment and discharge’ (including ‘independent admission’, ‘admission of a minor’, ‘supported admission’ and ‘supported admission beyond 30 days’); ‘responsibilities of other agencies’; ‘restriction to discharge functions by professionals not covered by profession’; ‘offences and penalties’ and other ‘miscellaneous’ matters, including de facto decriminalisation of suicide. Overall, the legislation presents a broad range of provisions which, if implemented, will affect virtually every element of mental health services in India. Many of the changes are clearly informed by the Act’s explicit aim to meet the requirements of the CRPD. The legislation has stimulated considerable discussion in the psychiatry literature and while one line of discourse is that the new legislation was not needed in the first place, and that amendments to the Mental Health Act, 1987 would have sufficed, there is nonetheless an acceptance that the new Act will have practical and legal implications in practice and needs to be understood.