LGBTQIA+ rights, mental health systems, and curative violence in India

This commentary examines the space-attitude-administrative complex of mainstream mental health systems with regard to its responses to decriminalisation of non-heteronormative sexual identities. Even though the Supreme Court, in its 2018 order, instructed governments to disseminate its judgment widely, there has been no such attempt till date. None of the government-run mental health institutions has initiated an LGBTQIA+ rights-based awareness campaign on the judgment, considering that lack of awareness about sexualities in itself remains a critical factor for a non-inclusive environment that forces queer individuals to end their lives. That the State did not come up with any awareness campaign as mandated in the landmark judgment reflects an attitude of queerphobia in the State. Drawing on the concept of “biocommunicability”, analysing the public interfaces of state-run mental health institutions, and the responses of mental health systems to the death by suicide of a queer student, I illustrate how mental health institutions function to further anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiments of the state by churning out customer-patients out of structural violence and systemic inequalities, benefitting the mental health economy at the cost of queer citizens on whom curative violence is practised.

Tackling radicalization and terrorism in Dutch mental health institutions: Outcomes of a Dutch population survey

Virtually no data are available on mental health institutions working on radicalization and terrorism. In the Netherlands we conducted a survey of all mental health institutions (n = 65) in 2016. Fifty-seven per cent responded. The result is that mental health institutions in the Netherlands have started to take small steps towards tacking radicalization and terrorism. These small steps, even by 2016, are a contrast to the reality of radicalization and terrorist incidents and attacks in the Netherlands since 2000. This outcome may have been caused by the resistance of Dutch psychiatrists in the mental health sector (often heard in the Greater Amsterdam region) to the idea that radicalisation and terrorist incidents and attacks are not their work either. For their view is, it is not our job if there is no DSM disorder.

Challenge and response of mental health institutions in COVID-19 pandemic: the experience from China (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED Mental health system in China have encountered challenges during Covid-19 pandemic. The mental health institutions and government collaborated on improving the bad situation. This paper provided a brief summary of the challenges and lessons learned by the first-line mental health staff during this period and proposed some suggestions to deal with similar challenges in the future.

Report on Mental Disability in Canadian Law

This is the Canadian Report on the law regulating mental disability in Canadian law, prepared for the XIIIth Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law held in Montréal in August 1990. The Report has been brought up to date to take account of subsequent changes in the law of the Canadian common law provinces and in the new Civil Code of Québec. In accordance with the instructions given to the national reporters in the above mentioned Congress, the Report first describes at length the law dealing with the civil effects of mental disability, such as the appointment and powers of guardians or curators to administer the property and take important personal decisions for persons with mental disabilities. The Report then discusses the law regulating the involuntary commitment of the mentally disabled to mental health institutions. The Report discerns common trends in the law of Québec and of the Canadian common law provinces. With regard to the appointment of guardians or curators the trend is to move away from judicial declarations of total incapacity, to encourage the self-reliance and cure of the disabled and to grant to the person in charge only those powers absolutely necessary for the protection of the disabled. With regard to the involuntary commitment to mental health institutions, the legislators have been faced with the problem of regulating a decision to deprive a person of her liberty on the basis of a judgment about her mental condition and her future needs, and not on the basis of the commission of a crime or the violation of any law. The legislative solution has been to clarify the standards and criteria which have to be considered before committing a person and to provide more procedural safeguards in the reaching of that decision as well as more opportunities to review and to appeal that decision.