Human Rights and Mental Health
Human Rights and Mental Health
Are human rights infringed in treatments for mental health?
The question of whether human rights are infringed in treatments for mental health has many points to consider. To help answer the question, this essay will outline the basic principles of human rights and draw some comparisons against medical treatments and choices in patients who are of sound mind against patients who are mentally ill. Emphasis will also be given to ethics and the application of them in making decisions for treating people who are mentally ill including some examples of where the application of ethics has been used to make and justify decisions for such treatments.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was produced by the United Nations in 1948 and lays out the rights and freedoms that all humans should have. They are based on the principles of ‘fairness, equality, dignity and respect’ as documented in the BIHR (2006, p6). However, when considering the different rights and freedoms in relation to people being treated for mental health problems it is important to consider the application of them on an individual level. The Mental Health Act, which was introduced in 1983, describes the different categories of mental disorders as follows: - * Mental illness * Mental impairment * Severe mental impairment * Psychopathic disorder
Solely relying on the different Articles of the Human Rights Act to decide the provision of treatments to the mentally ill would discount the different spectrums seen within each of the above categories and would instead assume that everyone has the equal ability to understand what is in their own interests. The use of ethical reasoning can therefore be applied to support decisions made as ethics themselves are used to study what is right or wrong, good or bad and are broken into the following three categories: - * Meta-ethics in which the use of language and meaning of words is looked at to
Are human rights infringed in treatments for mental health?
The question of whether human rights are infringed in treatments for mental health has many points to consider. To help answer the question, this essay will outline the basic principles of human rights and draw some comparisons against medical treatments and choices in patients who are of sound mind against patients who are mentally ill. Emphasis will also be given to ethics and the application of them in making decisions for treating people who are mentally ill including some examples of where the application of ethics has been used to make and justify decisions for such treatments.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was produced by the United Nations in 1948 and lays out the rights and freedoms that all humans should have. They are based on the principles of ‘fairness, equality, dignity and respect’ as documented in the BIHR (2006, p6). However, when considering the different rights and freedoms in relation to people being treated for mental health problems it is important to consider the application of them on an individual level. The Mental Health Act, which was introduced in 1983, describes the different categories of mental disorders as follows: - * Mental illness * Mental impairment * Severe mental impairment * Psychopathic disorder
Solely relying on the different Articles of the Human Rights Act to decide the provision of treatments to the mentally ill would discount the different spectrums seen within each of the above categories and would instead assume that everyone has the equal ability to understand what is in their own interests. The use of ethical reasoning can therefore be applied to support decisions made as ethics themselves are used to study what is right or wrong, good or bad and are broken into the following three categories: - * Meta-ethics in which the use of language and meaning of words is looked at to