Book contents
- Mental Health, Legal Capacity, and Human Rights
- Mental Health, Legal Capacity, and Human Rights
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Contributors
- Preface
- Foreword
- Introduction A “Paradigm Shift” in Mental Health Care
- 1 The Alchemy of Agency: Reflections on Supported Decision-Making, the Right to Health and Health Systems as Democratic Institutions
- 2 Redefining International Mental Health Care in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic
- 3 Reparation for Psychiatric Violence: A Call to Justice
- 4 Divergent Human Rights Approaches to Capacity and Consent
- 5 From Pipe Dream to Reality: A Practical Legal Approach Towards the Global Abolition of Psychiatric Coercion
- 6 The ‘Fusion Law’ Proposals and the CRPD
- 7 Contextualising Legal Capacity and Supported Decision Making in the Global South Experiences: of Homeless Women with Mental Health Issues from Chennai, India
- 8 The Potential of the Legal Capacity Law Reform in Peru to Transform Mental Health Provision
- 9 Advancing Disability Equality Through Supported Decision-Making: The CRPD and the Canadian Constitution
- 10 Decisional Autonomy and India’s Mental Healthcare Act, 2017: A Comment on Emerging Jurisprudence
- 11 Towards Resolving Damaging Uncertainties: Progress in the United Kingdom and Elsewhere
- 12 ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’: Recent Developments in Mental Health Law Reform in Zambia and Ghana
- 13 Supported Decision-Making and Legal Capacity in Kenya
- 14 Seher’s “Circle of Care” Model in Advancing Supported Decision Making in India
- 15 The Swedish Personal Ombudsman: Support in Decision-Making and Accessing Human Rights
- 16 Strategies to Achieve a Rights-Based Approach through WHO QualityRights
- 17 The Clubhouse Model: A Framework for Naturally Occurring Supported Decision Making
- 18 Mind the Gap: Researching ‘Alternatives to Coercion’ in Mental Health Care
- 19 Psychiatric Advance Directives and Supported Decision-Making: Preliminary Developments and Pilot Studies in California
- 20 Community-Based Mental Health Care Delivery with Partners In Health: A Framework for Putting the CRPD into Practice
- 21 Lived Experience Perspectives from Australia, Canada, Kenya, Cameroon and South Africa – Conceptualising the Realities
- 22 In the Pursuit of Justice: Advocacy by and for Hyper-marginalized People with Psychosocial Disabilities through the Law and Beyond
- 23 The Danish Experience of Transforming Decision-Making Models
- 24 The Use of Patient Advocates in Supporting People with Psychosocial Disabilities
- 25 Users’ Involvement in Decision-Making: Lessons from Primary Research in India and Japan
- 26 Involvement of People with Lived Experience of Mental Health Conditions in Decision-Making to Improve Care in Rural Ethiopia
- References
9 - Advancing Disability Equality Through Supported Decision-Making: The CRPD and the Canadian Constitution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 August 2021
- Mental Health, Legal Capacity, and Human Rights
- Mental Health, Legal Capacity, and Human Rights
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Contributors
- Preface
- Foreword
- Introduction A “Paradigm Shift” in Mental Health Care
- 1 The Alchemy of Agency: Reflections on Supported Decision-Making, the Right to Health and Health Systems as Democratic Institutions
- 2 Redefining International Mental Health Care in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic
- 3 Reparation for Psychiatric Violence: A Call to Justice
- 4 Divergent Human Rights Approaches to Capacity and Consent
- 5 From Pipe Dream to Reality: A Practical Legal Approach Towards the Global Abolition of Psychiatric Coercion
- 6 The ‘Fusion Law’ Proposals and the CRPD
- 7 Contextualising Legal Capacity and Supported Decision Making in the Global South Experiences: of Homeless Women with Mental Health Issues from Chennai, India
- 8 The Potential of the Legal Capacity Law Reform in Peru to Transform Mental Health Provision
- 9 Advancing Disability Equality Through Supported Decision-Making: The CRPD and the Canadian Constitution
- 10 Decisional Autonomy and India’s Mental Healthcare Act, 2017: A Comment on Emerging Jurisprudence
- 11 Towards Resolving Damaging Uncertainties: Progress in the United Kingdom and Elsewhere
- 12 ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’: Recent Developments in Mental Health Law Reform in Zambia and Ghana
- 13 Supported Decision-Making and Legal Capacity in Kenya
- 14 Seher’s “Circle of Care” Model in Advancing Supported Decision Making in India
- 15 The Swedish Personal Ombudsman: Support in Decision-Making and Accessing Human Rights
- 16 Strategies to Achieve a Rights-Based Approach through WHO QualityRights
- 17 The Clubhouse Model: A Framework for Naturally Occurring Supported Decision Making
- 18 Mind the Gap: Researching ‘Alternatives to Coercion’ in Mental Health Care
- 19 Psychiatric Advance Directives and Supported Decision-Making: Preliminary Developments and Pilot Studies in California
- 20 Community-Based Mental Health Care Delivery with Partners In Health: A Framework for Putting the CRPD into Practice
- 21 Lived Experience Perspectives from Australia, Canada, Kenya, Cameroon and South Africa – Conceptualising the Realities
- 22 In the Pursuit of Justice: Advocacy by and for Hyper-marginalized People with Psychosocial Disabilities through the Law and Beyond
- 23 The Danish Experience of Transforming Decision-Making Models
- 24 The Use of Patient Advocates in Supporting People with Psychosocial Disabilities
- 25 Users’ Involvement in Decision-Making: Lessons from Primary Research in India and Japan
- 26 Involvement of People with Lived Experience of Mental Health Conditions in Decision-Making to Improve Care in Rural Ethiopia
- References
Summary
Canada is known around the world for being a leader in disability rights and a champion of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Notwithstanding this reputation, Canada has failed to fully embrace Article 12, the right to equal protection under the law. Canada has given only a qualified endorsement of supported decision-making, which empowers individuals with mental disabilities to exercise the right to legal capacity by making and communicating decisions for themselves. Canadian law preserves substitute decision-making regimes, which can arbitrarily strip persons with mental disabilities of their decision-making authority. This chapter looks at Canadian federalism (division of powers) as an obstacle to Canada’s effort to implement its international human rights obligations. Taking a fresh approach, the author argues that the federal government could be constitutionally permitted to legislatively redesign legal capacity in a way that enhances the dignity and autonomy interests of people with mental disabilities by ensuring comprehensive Article 12 compliance. This, it is argued, can be done with constitutional authority never before acknowledged but demonstrably defensible on the basis of promoting the full and equal inclusion of persons with mental disabilities in Canadian society as a matter of national concern.
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- Mental Health, Legal Capacity, and Human Rights , pp. 140 - 154Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021