The Uses and Limits of International Law on Behalf of Global Mental Health
Dr. M. Prabhu, American Journal of Psychiatry, Residents Journal (June 2010).
Twenty years after Jonathan Mann spearheaded the health and human rights approach to international public health, it may seem heretical to debate the value of international human rights law to global mental health. Yet this is what a group of psychiatrists and residents did recently, after a presentation on international law I gave, as part of my residency program’s lively new global mental health curriculum. The presentation was inspired in part by the Lancet series on global mental health, which called for scaled-up mental health services and national legislation that was in accordance with international human rights instruments. If the Lancet series was a call to action on behalf of global health, then we concluded our evening with a call to action to psychiatrists: international law is too important to be left to the lawyers. Even if international human rights obligations and other bodies of international law cannot be a panacea for urgent global mental health problems, they are, nonetheless, valuable tools for the global mental health agenda. If psychiatrists interested in global mental health are to be the best possible advocates for their patients, it behooves them to gain access to the world of international legal regimes.
Available here for download June_2010