India’s work on introduction of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities or UNCRPD in the year 2007 is a significant step because it helped in attracting the attention towards the rights of individuals having disabilities. However, disability is considered as a difficult process, and it is a consequence of interaction of individuals having environmental, attitudinal, and impairments barriers that play their role in obstructing their effectual participation in the society. Attitudes are the most significant barriers for making rights of individuals certain. There are two models on the basis of which disability can be discussed. These models are medical model and social model.
According to the medical model, disability is a problem, and disabled people are suffering from this problem due to abnormal psychological, physical, and anatomical functioning. The social model of disability on the other hand explains that disability is because of the environmental and attitudinal barriers. The medical model is indicative of the fact that the mental disorder is because of the neuro-development or neuro-hormonal imbalance. Social model, however, proposed the bio-psycho-social model for explaining mental illness of individuals. There are ten leading reasons that are responsible for mental disorders in individuals. These reasons are alcohol dependence, depression, OCD or obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, and bipolar affective disorder.
Furthermore, medical illness face several challenges, particularly during the disability assessment because of the invisibility of mental disability, difficulty in diagnosing mental illness via objective laboratory instrument, difficult quantification of mental illness signs and symptoms, dynamic nature of mental illness, myths regarding mental illness, provision of adequate treatment, and non-availability of the instruments that can be relied upon for measuring disability.
Additionally, UNCRPD explained that disability is because of the association of impairments with the environmental and attitudinal barriers that do not allow an individual to participate completely in the society. The convention, however, also played a significant role because it officially ordered the government to modify its laws at local level, to work in order to ensure identification and elimination of the barriers and obstacles for complying with UNCRPD terms so that rights of disabled people can be protected, and also laws can be amended properly. In order to ensure this, the Government of India introduced two bills in the year 2013 and 2014. The government, however, drafter Mental Health Care Bill in 2013, and Rights of Persons with disabilities Bill in 2014 (Rao, Ramya and Bada, 2016).
It is true that mentally ill people are discriminated and denounced in societies, that hinders their active involvement and participation in the society. However, such situation is aggravated when mental health care, measures of social welfare and rehabilitation are meant to be provided to mentally weak people. the necessity of the hour is to properly address this issue that deals with the attitudinal barriers because it is essential for restoring and protecting rights of people who are suffering from mental illness. This article has discussed in detail the limitations in Disabilities Bill of 2014, by keeping people with mental illness into consideration. There is a need of synchronization of both Bills, which are Rights of Persons with Mental Ilness Bill, 2014, and Mental Health Care Bill, 2013 in order to ensure provision of justice to individuals having mental illness.
Reference
Rao, G.P., Ramya, V.S., and Bada, M.S. (2016). The rights of persons with Disability Bill, 2014: How “enabling” is it for persons with mental illness? Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 121-128
