ABSTRACT
Mental health law is undergoing a transformation. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) shed new light on the unequal restrictions on the rights of people with disability that occur in mental health law. It demands equal rights to legal capacity and liberty for people with disability. This shakes the foundations of mental health law, which is arguably predicated on legitimising denials of liberty via involuntary detention and denials of legal capacity via forced treatment. Prior to the CRPD, the focus of most human rights work related to mental health law was about ensuring that there are sufficient procedural safeguards in place when denials of liberty and legal capacity take place. The CRPD now requires that states re-examine mental health law and eliminate any part of it that denies legal capacity or liberty on the basis of disability. Professor Bernadette McSherry’s work is at the forefront of a burgeoning cohort of scholars grappling with these newly understood human rights demands. This chapter draws on this scholarship and provides an overview of the CRPD demands in relation to mental health law. It embraces the CRPD as a framework for deconstructing and reimagining mental health law.
