A Mental Health Law for Low and Middle Income Countries

Abstract

Mental health law in its current form in western countries evolved in the context of nineteenth century asylum psychiatry. It was a solution created to deal with a social problem—how to manage persons unable to participate in rational exchange in a social contract, who at the same time could not be held responsible for their actions. A system of legal relations was established involving family, doctors, administrators and the judicial system. The detained person fell into a 'special subordinate legal status', becoming subject to a regime of (principally) medical paternalism (Unsworth 1987). Being a mentally ill person was virtually synonymous with being in a psychiatric institution, and until the early twentieth century, there was no 'voluntary' status. Detention and treatment became increasingly regulated by legal statute in Europe and the United States in the latter years of the nineteenth century, resulting in complex statutes such as the Lunacy Act 1890 in England. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)