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      Is the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Impacting Mental Health Laws and Policies in High-Income Countries? A Case Study of Implementation in Canada

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          Abstract

          Background

          Persons with psychosocial disabilities face disparate access to healthcare and social services worldwide, along with systemic discrimination, structural inequalities, and widespread human rights abuses. Accordingly, many people have looked to international human rights law to help address mental health challenges. On December 13, 2006, the United Nations formally adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) – the first human rights treaty of the 21st century and the fastest ever negotiated.

          Methods

          This study assesses the CRPD’s potential impact on mental health systems and presents a legal and public policy analysis of its implementation in one high-income country: Canada. As part of this analysis, a critical review was undertaken of the CRPD’s implementation in Canadian legislation, public policy, and jurisprudence related to mental health.

          Results

          While the Convention is clearly an important step forward, there remains a divide, even in Canada, between the Convention’s goals and the experiences of Canadians with disabilities. Its implementation is perhaps hindered most by Canada’s reservations to Article 12 of the CRPD on legal capacity for persons with psychosocial disabilities. The overseeing CRPD Committee has stated that Article 12 only permits “supported decision-making” regimes, yet most Canadian jurisdictions maintain their “substitute decision-making” regimes. This means that many Canadians with mental health challenges continue to be denied legal capacity to make decisions related to their healthcare, housing, and finances. But changes are afoot: new legislation has been introduced in different jurisdictions across the country, and recent court decisions have started to push policymakers in this direction.

          Conclusion

          Despite the lack of explicit implementation, the CRPD has helped to facilitate a larger shift in social and cultural paradigms of mental health and disability in Canada. But ratification and passive implementation are not enough. Further efforts are needed to implement the CRPD’s provisions and promote the equal enjoyment of human rights by all Canadian citizens – and presumably for all other people too, from the poorest to the wealthiest countries.

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          Most cited references54

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          Human rights violations of people with mental and psychosocial disabilities: an unresolved global crisis.

          This report reviews the evidence for the types of human rights violations experienced by people with mental and psychosocial disabilities in low-income and middle-income countries as well as strategies to prevent these violations and promote human rights in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The article draws on the views, expertise, and experience of 51 people with mental and psychosocial disabilities from 18 low-income and middle-income countries as well as a review of English language literature including from UN publications, non-governmental organisation reports, press reports, and the academic literature. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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            Healing traditions: culture, community and mental health promotion with Canadian Aboriginal peoples

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              Out of Darkness into Light? Introducing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                +1-613-562-5800 , steven.hoffman@globalstrategylab.org
                lathika.sritharan@globalstrategylab.org
                ali.tejpar@globalstrategylab.org
                Journal
                BMC Int Health Hum Rights
                BMC Int Health Hum Rights
                BMC International Health and Human Rights
                BioMed Central (London )
                1472-698X
                11 November 2016
                11 November 2016
                2016
                : 16
                : 28
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Global Strategy Lab, Centre for Health Law, Policy & Ethics, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, 57 Louis Pasteur Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5 Canada
                [2 ]Department of Global Health & Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, MA USA
                [3 ]Department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics and McMaster Health Forum, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario Canada
                Article
                103
                10.1186/s12914-016-0103-1
                5105274
                27836014
                60b1116c-dba0-4e8e-8f41-6fa2419002ca
                © The Author(s). 2016

                Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

                History
                : 4 March 2016
                : 21 October 2016
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100005416, Norges Forskningsråd;
                Award ID: 234608
                Categories
                Commentary
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2016

                Health & Social care
                psychosocial disabilities,human rights,international law,mental health law

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