Mental Disability and International Human Rights
Credits
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15
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Module Convenor
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Peter Bartlett
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Term Offered
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Spring
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Assessment
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Essay
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People with mental disabilities are generally marginalised in programmes of human rights law. This is inappropriate. Roughly a tenth of the population will suffer from a severe mental disability - be that a mental illness or a learning difficulty. That figure is fairly constant internationally, so this is not a marginal group of people. And the legal interventions for people with mental disabilities are unusually - almost uniquely - intrusive. Not merely may they be locked up in institutions, but in most countries of they world they can be forcibly administered very powerful medication or electro-convulsive therapy, and sometime have their legal personality removed by operation of law.
It is not the view of this module that all coercive interventions are necessarily unjustified; but it is the view of the module convenors that such coercion raises serious human rights issues: it must be done with due regard to international standards and common humanity. The first objective of this module is thus to make students aware of those standards, and the sorts of domestic law that people with mental disabilities have a right to expect. We are also concerned with how law actually works, and look to refer students to ground-level studies of how law is actually implemented. That includes both legal structures (how compulsion is challenged) and also standards of care (whether individuals are treated with appropriate respect and dignity in the care they are given).
If the provision of human rights to people with mental disabilities is a subject that must not be ignored, it is equally a subject raising particular difficulties. Classic human rights theory tends to envisage an individual with the will and ability to challenge decisions. While most people with mental disabilities have such a will and ability, some as a result of their disability do not. For these people, the very real question arises as to what human rights law means for people not in a position to press for their rights. As a second aim, the module therefore is intended to challenge the presuppositions of human rights law.