Mental health, community care and human rights in Europe: Still an incomplete picture?(1)
Jill Stavert(2)
‘One of the key messages to governments is that mental asylums, where they
still exist, must be closed down and replaced with well-organized
community-based care and psychiatric beds in general hospitals. The days of
locking up people with mental or behavioural disorders in grim prison-like
psychiatric institutions must end.’
World Health Organisation, World Health Report 2001: Mental Health – New
Understanding, New Hope, p4.
Introduction
a. The recognition of human rights of those suffering from mental illness
According to the European Union Green Paper Improving the mental health of
the population: Towards a strategy on mental health for the European Union,
more than 27% adult Europeans are likely to suffer from at least one form
of mental illness during any one year and by 2020 depression is expected to
be the highest ranking cause of disease in the developed world (3). A
recent article which reported the results of a global study in The Lancet
also comments that “depression impairs health state to a substantially
greater degree than other diseases”(4).
Footnotes:
(1) The author would like to thank
Douglas Maule (Centre for Law, Napier University) for his very helpful
comments on an earlier draft of this article. Any errors or omissions are,
however, those of the author.
(2) Lecturer, Centre for Law, Napier University, Edinburgh.
(3) European Union, Improving the mental health of the population: Towards
a strategy on mental health for the European Union, Brussels COM (2005)
484, p4,referring to H.U. Wittchen and F. Jacobi (2005), ‘Size and burden
of mental disorders in Europe: A critical review and appraisal of 27
studies’, 15(4) European Neuropsychopharmacology 357; World Health
Organisation (WHO), World Health Report 2001:Mental Health –New
Understanding, New Hope ,www.who.int/whr/2001 (accessed 8 September
2007).
(4) S. Moussavi et al (2007), ‘Depression, chronic diseases,and decrements
in health: results from the World Health Surveys’, 370 The Lancet 85,
www.thelancet.com (accessed 8 September 2007).
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