Why are we still living in the past? Sri Lanka needs urgent and timely reforms of its archaic mental health laws

Abstract

Mental health legislation protects the rights of people with mental illnesses. However, despite major social, political and cultural changes, Sri Lankan mental health services still operate on laws enacted mostly during the British rule more than a century ago, in the pre-psychotropics era, and focusing more on the detention of people with mental illnesses than on their treatment. It is high time all stakeholders made efforts for the much-awaited new Mental Health Act to pass through parliament urgently to meet the needs and protect the rights of patients, their caregivers and service providers.