A new article in Health and Human Rights Journal calls for an approach to mental health in which every aspect of it and its determinants is endowed with respect for, and the realization of, human rights.
A new perspective article calls for a more comprehensive, human rights-based approach to mental health that addresses the wider social, economic, and environmental factors that cause emotional distress. The article was published in Health and Human Rights Journal, a joint publication of Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health & Human Rights and Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health.
The authors contrast a human rights-based approach with today’s biomedical approach, which assumes increased psychiatric screening, diagnosis and treatment of mental health symptoms will lead to mental well-being for individuals and nations.
The article’s authors note that there has been criticism of the psychiatric influence, or “psychiatrization,” of the Sustainable Development Goals issued by the United Nations, which identified improved mental health as a priority for global development. Psychiatrization refers to the increasing influence of psychiatry through its institutions and practices affecting an increasing number of people and areas of life.
“Concerns about psychiatrization stem from the fact that the focus is predominantly on scaling up the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, without paying attention to how a biomedical approach is limited in addressing the environmental, social, economic, and political determinants of mental health,” wrote lead author Lisa Cosgrove, PhD, a professor in the Counseling Psychology Department at the University of Massachusetts and co-founder of the Centre for Mental Health, Human Rights, and Social Justice.
Cosgrove and colleagues call for a human rights-based approach to mental health which “ensures that every aspect of health care and its determinants is imbued with respect for, and the realization of, human rights.”
The article references Dainius Pūras, a child psychiatrist and former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, who argued that mental well-being should not be defined as the absence of a mental health condition, but instead is the result of a social, political, economic and physical environment that enables people to live a life of dignity, with full enjoyment of their rights in the pursuit of their full potential.
“The Citizens Commission on Human Rights applauds the call for a human rights-based approach to mental health,” said Anne Goedeke, president of the CCHR National Affairs Office. “CCHR is dedicated to ensuring human rights and dignity in the field of mental health.”