Abolitionist perspectives in the context of mental health laws

The Mental Health Compulsory Treatment Criteria and Alignment of Decision Making Independent Review Panel approached the Consumer Academic Program (CAP) at the Centre for Mental Health Nursing to investigate and highlight the views and perspectives of people who advocate for the abolition of compulsory mental health treatment.  These perspectives raise human rights issues, centering people’s equality before the law, consent and choice.  The project considers creative ways to overt these seldom heard voices and views, through interviewing mental health advocates and gathering themes from other source material such as blogs, podcasts and videos.

The following domains constitute likely emergent themes:

• Legal and policy changes to support legal capacity of people who at the moment would be seen as not having mental capacity to make their own decisions.
• Strengthening innovation in supported decision-making practices within current services, based on the person’s will and preferences and directing care toward the resumption of individual legal capacity.
• Investing in alternatives to existing services such as peer run services and coercion free supports

This research project is funded by the Victorian Department of Health.