Mental disorders are ubiquitous, profoundly disabling and people suffering from them frequently endure the worst conditions of life.
In recent decades both mental health and human rights have emerged as areas of practice, inquiry, national policy-making and shared international concern. Human-rights monitoring and reporting are core features of public administration in most countries, and human rights law has burgeoned. Mental health also enjoys a new dignity in scholarship, international discussions and programs, mass-media coverage and political debate. Today's experts insist that it impacts on every aspect of health and human well-being, and so becomes essential to achieving human rights.
It is remarkable however that the struggle for human rights over the past two centuries largely bypassed the plight of those with mental disabilities. Mental health is frequently absent from routine health and social policy-making and research, and from many global health initiatives, for example, the Millenium Development Goals. Yet the impact of mental disorder is profound, not least when combined with poverty, mass trauma and social disruption, as in many poorer countries. Stigma is widespread and mental disorders frequently go unnoticed and untreated. Even in settings where mental health has attracted attention and services have undergone reform, resources are typically scarce, inequitably distributed, and inefficiently deployed. Social inclusion of those with psychosocial disabilities languishes as a distant ideal.
In practice, therefore, the international community still tends to prioritise human rights while largely ignoring mental health, which remains in the shadow of physical-health programs. Yet not only do persons with mental disorders suffer deprivations of human rights but violations of human rights are now recognized as a major cause of mental disorder - a pattern that indicates how inextricably linked are the two domains.
This volume offers the first attempt at a comprehensive survey of the key aspects of this interrelationship. It examines the crucial relationships and histories of mental health and human rights, and their interconnections with law, culture, ethnicity, class, economics, neuro-biology, and stigma. It investigates the responsibilities of states in securing the rights of those with mental disabilities, the predicaments of vulnerable groups, and the challenge of promoting and protecting mental health. In this wide-ranging analysis, many themes recur - for example, the enormous mental health burdens caused by war and social conflicts; the need to include mental-health interventions in humanitarian programs in a manner that does not undermine traditional healing and recovery processes of indigenous peoples; and the imperative to reduce gender-based violence and inequities. It particularly focuses on the first-person narratives of mental-health consumers, their families and carers, the collective voices that invite a major shift in vision and praxis.
The book will be valuable for mental-health and helping professionals, lawyers, philosophers, human-rights workers and their organisations, the UN and other international agencies, social scientists, representatives of government, teachers, religious professionals, researchers, and policy-makers.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
It is the first ever comprehensive examination of the hugely important, relatively new field in international human rights law. It is especially important in that it offers an inter-disciplinary view on a huge variety of issues without which proper understanding of the issues is simply impossible. ... It is hard not to feel humbled when holding this impressive volume in one's hands. It bravely and comprehensively addresses an issue which has been side-lined for decades, even in the discussions surrounding the right to health. ... The present volume is an ambitious, timely and comprehensive contribution against this prevailing trend, with a unique combination of views and perceptions by so many from diverse disciplines, making it a marked contribution to the hugely important topic of mental health and human rights. * Dr Elina Stienerte, Human Rights Law Review, 13:4 * This textbook is a tour de force in its ambitions and achievement The book is impressively comprehensive, demonstrates appropriately rigorous scholarship, and yet remains lucid and interesting. I have learnt a great deal from it, not least that the scale of the historically cumulative crime committed against people with a mental disorder amounts nationally, if not yet jurisprudentially to a crime against humanity This textbook should appear in every medical library and on every psychiatrist's bookshelf, and representative content should be incorporated into the curricula and examinations of medical students and trainee psychiatrists. * The British Journal of Psychiatry, May 2013 *
Edited by Michael Dudley, Adolescent Service, Prince of Wales Hospital, Australia, Derrick Silove, Mental Health Centre, Liverpool Hospital, Australia, and Fran Gale, Political Science and Social Work, University of Western Sydney, Australia
Contributors:
Professor Myron L. Belfer, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, USA
Professor Dinesh Bhugra, Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, UK
Professor Henry Brodaty, Primary Dementia Collaborative Research Centre, School of Psychiatry University of New South Wales, Australia
Dr Elaine Brohan, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK
Professor Ngiare Brown, Bullana, the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health, University of Sydney, Australia
Professor Richard Bryant, School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Australia
Dr Tom Calma, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Australia
Dr Adrian Carter, Queensland Brain Institute and the Department of Philosophy, The University of Queensland St Lucia, Australia
Associate Professor Dilek Cindoglu, Bilkent University, Department of Political Science, Turkey
Professor John R M Copeland, University of Liverpool, Department of Psychiatry, UK
Professor Francois Crepeau, Faculty of Law, Université de Montréal, France
Professor Peter J Cooper, Winnicott Research Unit, School of Psychology, University of Reading, UK
Professor Amita Dhanda, University of Law, Hyderabad, India.
Dr Michael Dudley, Adolescent Service, Prince of Wales Hospital, Australia
Dr Catherine Esposito Annandale, Australia
Professor Alan Flisher, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Dr Fran Gale, University of Western Sydney, Australia
Preston J. Garrison, World Federation for Mental Health, USA
Anne-Claire Gayet, Université de Montréal, France
Dr Ian Hall East London Foundation NHS Trust, Community Learning Disability Service, Mile End Hospital, UK
Wayne Hall, School of Population Health, The University of Queensland, Australia
Winton Higgins, Institute for International Studies, University of Technology, Australia
Professor Ernest Hunter, School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Australia
Professor Jon Jureidini, Discipline of Psychiatry, University of Adelaide, Australia
Aliya Kassam, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK
Professor Laurence J. Kirmayer, Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University, USA
Professor Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University, Department of Anthropology, U.S.A.
Professor Martin Knapp, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Dr. Ann Law, Institute of Psychiatry, UK
Oliver Lewis, Mental Disability Advocacy Center, Hungary
Ms. Elanor Lewis-Holmes, Institute Of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK
Dr Crick Lund, Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape Town, South Africa
David McDaid, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Professor A C McFarlane, School of Comparative American Studies, Department of History, University of Warwick, UK
Dr Tristan McGeorge, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK
Professor Patrick McGorry, University of Melbourne Australia
Kathleen Maltzahn, Project Respect, Australia
Dr Roshni Mangalore, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Sarah Mares, Institute of Psychiatry, Australia
Professor Jonathan H. Marks, Bioethics and Medical Humanities Program, The Pennsylvania State University, USA
Janet Meagher, Inclusion, Australia
Professor Helen, Milroy Centre for Aboriginal Medical and Dental Health, The University of Western Australia, Australia
Professor Philip Mitchell, Mood Disorders Unit, Prince of Wales Hospital, Australia
Professor Paul E Mullen, Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health, Thomas Embling Hospital, Australia
Professor Louise Newman, Monash University, Centre for Developmental Psychiatry & Psychology, Australia
David Oaks, MindFreedom International, USA
Professor Vikram Patel, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK
Professor Michael L. Perlin, Online Mental Disability Law Program, New York Law School, USA
Dr Jennifer Randall, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK
Professor Beverley Raphael, University of Western Sydney, Australia
Dr Susan Rees, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, James Cook University Cairns, Australia.
Associate Professor Alan Rosen, Royal North Shore Hospital and Community Mental Health Services, Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Sydney, Australia
Diana Samarasan, Disability Rights Fund, USA
Professor Benedetto Saraceno, Department of Psychiatry, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Professor Norman Sartorius, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Associate Professor Ufuk Sezgin, Istanbul University, Turkey
Julia Shearsby 17 Booragul St, Beverly Hills, 2209 NSW. Australia
Professor Derrick Silove, Psychiatry Research and Teaching Unit, Mental Health Centre, Liverpool Hospital, Australia
Professor Meg Smith, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Sydney, Australia
Zachary Steel, Center for Population Mental Health Research, Australia
Professor Dan Stein, UCT Dept of Psychiatry, South Africa.
Ezra Susser, Statistics and Epidemiology, HIV Center for Clinical and Behavior Studies, USA
Professor Daniel Tarantola, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Australia
Professor Graham Thornicroft, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK
Mark Tomlinson, Department of Psychology University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
Robert van Voren, Global Initiative on Psychiatry, The Netherlands
Dr Lakshmi Vijayakumar, Department of Psychiatry, Voluntary Health Services, India
Dr Charles Watters, European Centre for the Study of Migration and Social Care, University of Kent, UK
James Welsh, Amnesty International International, UK
Dr Evan Yacoub, South West London and St George's NHS Trust, Springfield Hospital, UK
Professor Dr. Sahika Yüksel, Department of Psychiatry Capa Istanbul University, Turkey
Herausgeber*in
Adolescent Service, Prince of Wales Hospital, Australia
Mental Health Centre, Liverpool Hospital, Australia
Political Science and Social Work, University of Western Sydney, Australia
