Quality rights - Curbing abuses of persons with psychosocial, cognitive, intellectual disability
In 2012, Human Rights Watch released an incriminatory report on the range of human rights abuses in mental health facilities and traditional and faith-based healing centres across Ghana.
These abuses are taking place despite the country’s ratification of a number of international human rights treaties, including the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
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Abuses range from the denial of food and medicine, inadequate shelter, involuntary medical treatment, and physical abuse amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as well as neglect.
Also incriminating is the fact that only few government supported community-based mental health services, including housing, employment, healthcare and medical care existed in the country.
A good number of service users interviewed by Human Rights Watch within the period indicated that their preference on treatment was more towards visiting on an outpatient basis while living with their families.
Improving service deliver
The Ghanaian society and successive governments have in recent years taken some steps to improve the care of people with mental disabilities.
One major step was the passage of the Mental Health Act in June 2012.For the first time, a legal document has recognised the absolute need to respect the rights and privacy of persons with mental illnesses and has laid out a clear procedure for persons with mental disabilities to challenge continued unwarranted detention.
As a result, a conscious attempt was made to reduce overcrowding in state psychiatric facilities. Efforts to regulate traditional health practices that are based on theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures have culminated in the enactment of the Traditional and Alternative Medicine Act.
Having ratified several international conventions, such as the CRPD and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Ghana is obligated to respect the rights of persons with disabilities (PWDs) under these international and regional legal instruments.
It is, however, bound to do same under the national constitution and other local legislation. Despite these legal provisions, Ghana has done little to ensure that protections for persons with mental disabilities are in place and enforced.
Persons with mental illnesses in Ghana still suffer various forms of abuses in their homes, workplaces and care facilities.
These abuses include stigma and discrimination; lock up, chaining, denial of food and adequate health care, physical and verbal abuse, overcrowding, poor hygiene, involuntary admission, prolonged detention and other forms of violations, as well as neglect.
Dealing with abuses
As part of its recommendations to deal with the various forms of abuses against persons with mental illnesses, the Human Rights Watch report sanctioned that steps are taken to immediately address issues relating to the provision of some basic needs such as acceptable food, shelter and health care for persons with mental disabilities.
It also recommended civil and criminal penalties for abusive practices such as chaining, starvation in the form of fasting, prolonged seclusion, and other forms of cruel and degrading treatment in hospitals and prayer camps.
Quality Rights
It is towards curbing these injustices and abuses to persons with mental disabilities globally that the World Health Organisation (WHO) conceptualised the WHO Quality Rights initiative.
The initiative is set towards instituting respect for persons with mental disabilities in an attempt to ensure speedy recovery in a client-led recovery approach.
Quality Rights aims to empower individuals and organisations for PWDs to know their human rights and to advocate for change to enable people to live independently in the community and receive appropriate supports.
The initiative seeks to promote rights that are often denied to people with mental and intellectual disabilities, including the right to access appropriate mental health services in the community, the right to choose, the right to have a family life, the right to live in the community and the right to be active citizens
Initiative
Quality Rights, therefore, presents a valuable contribution to our collective efforts to shape and influence policies and practice of mental health care which in essence will enable everyone to be included in their communities.
The initiative presents a paradigm shift in the provision of tools and strategies for mental health care with the highest standards of respect for human rights.
It appraises dignity and well-being as closely related concepts and outlines an interdisciplinary and holistic outlook in which subjective discomfort is addressed without undermining the dignity and ability of the person to make decisions, even in critical situations.
That, according to Quality Rights, should be the foundation on which new mental health care models were constructed, respecting the principles of the CRPD.
By the QualityRights Team of the Mental Health Authority (MHA),
E-mail: [email protected]
