Examining the mistreatment of persons with mental disabilities around the world, Michael Perlin identifies universal factors that contaminate mental disability law, including lack of comprehensive legislation and of independent counsel; inadequate care; poor or nonexistent community programming; and inhumane forensic systems.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Disability Human Rights Law" that was published in Laws

This book examines the changing relationship between disability and the law, addressing the intersection of human rights principles, human rights law, domestic law and the experience of people with disabilities. Drawn from the global experience of scholars and activists in a number of jurisdictions and legal systems, the core human rights principles of dignity, equality and inclusion and participation are analyzed within a framework of critical disability legal scholarship.

Provides practical solutions for ending coercion in mental health care and realizing the universal right to legal capacity.

The issue of the human rights of people with mental disabilities has been ignored for decades by the international agencies vested with the protection of human rights on a global scale. It is only within the past several years that society has begun to understand that violations of persons' mental disability rights are violations of human rights. This is the first and only casebook that considers the intersection between international human rights law and comparative mental disability law; it provides a systematic investigation of all of the relevant issues. Topics covered include a comparison of civil and common law systems, an overview of international human rights law, an overview of regional human rights tribunals, an overview of U.S. constitutional mental disability law, mental disability law in an international human rights context, comparative mental disability law (civil and common, scholarly articles and case law), the use of institutional psychiatry as a means of suppressing political dissension, the "universal factors" in this area of law, and the globalization of disability law.

People with mental disorders often suffer the worst conditions of life.This book is the first comprehensive survey of the mental health/human rights relationship. It examines the relationships and histories of mental health and human rights, and their interconnections with law, culture, ethnicity, class, economics, biology, and stigma.

For many years, instituti ...