Nandini Singh & Swati Mishra, IIMT & School of Law, Delhi
ABSTRACT
Out of all the myriad issues that the country is facing right now, the problem of mental health is momentous which has always been neglected because of the paucity in the legislations and the stigma that is entrenched in the minds of the people. This is perplexing as mental disabilities are pervasive, affecting approximately 8% of the world’s population.1 The pejorative and deprecatory attitude that people have in response to a mental health disease resorts the victims to be surreptitious about their comorbidities and thus further deteriorates their wellbeing.
The underlying problem related to the non addressal is that there is a distaste entrenched in the society for the problems pertaining to mental health. The person having issues is purported as a problem in the society due to the lack of awareness and understanding.
To ameliorate the situation, The Legislature carved and brought into place The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 (hereinafter referred as MHCA) which aims to provide mental healthcare and services for persons with mental illness and to promote, and fulfil the rights of such persons during delivery of mental healthcare and services. But whether this enactment was able to fulfill its purpose is what remains a question till date. The incongruous provisions of the act limit the applicability and thus fails at fulfilling the purpose of the Act in entirety.
With the coming of Pandemic, it brought an unprecedented time wherein isolation, joblessness, violence and stress became key ingredients of every person’s life and thus further invigorated the diseases relating to mental health. With unknown prognoses, severe shortage of oxygen and medicines left almost ever individual’s spirit tormented and anxiety looming, thus mental health problems becoming a ubiquitous problem, or I can say took a form of a pandemic within a pandemic.
Though our Constitution vouchsafes the Right to Life engrafted under Article 21 which inculcates the right to health but it becomes otiose as there is still not express and suffice addressal of the problem of mental health because of the rationale that still mental disease is still not considered to be under the realm of Diseases.
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