The Union health ministry has decided to frame India’s first mental health policy to overcome the growing burden of mental illness in the country.
At present India is following the Mental Health Act of 1987 which is an upgradation of the Indian Lunacy Act of 1912. This was enacted in the year 1993. This policy outlines only the procedures and legal property matters relating to the detention of the one with a mental illness rather than to outlining the rights or treatments available to a person in need.
According to Rapnaboli, managing trustee of Anjali, a mental rights health organisation, the current mental health policy of India only defines the rights of staff members within the system and explains processes, by which a person can be institutionalised, voluntarily or involuntarily. Although the Act explicitly mentions the right to appropriate treatment and rehabilitation, to personal liberty, and to improved community and family life rather than the life of incarceration, it also empowers the judiciary and the police to take any mentally ill person in custody and remand him or her to a mental hospital.
With the current mental health Act majorly describing extensive details of the rights of the government employees and not mentioning any specifics of what types of treatments that need to be available or what rights a person has with regards to their treatment or care while in the hospital or the right to make decisions about them, the present Act fails to protect the rights of the mentally disabled persons. Because of which many mental patients are inhumanly shifted from prison to hospitals without any regard for their condition or the possibility of reintegration into the community. The present mental health act does not even provide the provision for explanation for changes in treatment. Essentially, all the power lies in the hands of the system or the guardians, not in the hands of those whose lives are most directly affected.
Having understood the drawbacks of the present mental health policy, the union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has decided to frame a new mental health policy for the country. According to the health ministry, the mental illness burden in the country is growing with about 20-30 million people in active need of mental health care. There are about 37 mental hospitals across the country with 3500 trained psychiatrists serving around 75,000 patients. At present India has huge deficit of psychiatric staff in the mental hospitals. There are only 100 clinical psychologists and psychiatric social workers and about 900 psychiatric nurses serving the mentally disabled community in the country.
“The mental health sector in the country is neglected since long, to overcome this we are planning to frame a new policy which will be patient’s rights protection centric. For this we are involving country’s best experts in the field who will cover the full range of complex issues linked to this branch of medicine. We are also planning to come up with new institutions replicating National Institute for Mental Health and Neurological Sciences in Bangalore,” said the Minister in a note.
Initially, the health ministry has decided to upgrade infrastructure facilities in the mental hospitals, medical colleges and is also planning improve the intake of students into mental health education and thereby increase manpower in all branches of mental health care.