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Mental health legislation in contemporary India: a critical review

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Kunal Kala  and
A. K. Kala
Kunal Kala
Affiliation:
Manchester, UK, email [email protected]
A. K. Kala
Affiliation:
95-A, Model Gram, Ludhiana 141002, India
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After 20 years of experience with the legislation, it is now a good time to assess the Mental Health Act 1987 of India. How useful has it been to consumers, carers and the mental health profession? It has been perceived as isolationist because it deals only with psychiatric hospitals and excludes a large number of general hospital psychiatric units from its purview. It is also un-implementable in some parts of the country because of the shortage of resources. From a human rights perspective, it is deficient in two important ways: it failed to establish independent review bodies for involuntary admissions; and it lacks provision for research with people who have a mental illness.

Type
Special Papers
Information
International Psychiatry , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , July 2007 , pp. 69 - 71
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 2007

References

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