Defending the CRPD: Dignity, flourishing, and the universal right to mental health

COVID-19 Lockdowns: a Public Mental Health Ethics Perspective

“…Framing mental health as a right informs officialdom that mental ill-health undermines the common good, inflicting moral damage on citizens that could be mitigated by the provision of adequate mental health measures (Green 2000 ). It reminds all concerned that the whole community has a moral duty to respect people living with mental ill-health as having human dignity and as entitled to health and well-being as anyone else (Molas 2016 ).…”

“…Consequently, if governments are unwilling to discharge their duty to fulfil basic mental health needs, they will have stultified the democracy-enabling rights of an unknown proportion of the populace (Gostin 2001 ). Secondly, neglect of the right to mental health is in important ways neglect of the right to physical health; the two cannot be prescinded from each other (Molas 2016 ). There is a broad consensus inside and outside the WHO that mental ill-health is a risk factor for communicable as well as non-communicable diseases and a contributory factor to accidental as well as non-accidental injuries.…”