Mental Health Rights Scotland

Mental Health Rights Scotland is an association of service users and carers who are campaigning for recognition of human rights in the Scottish mental health system.

In particular we are campaigning for fundamental reform of Scottish mental health and incapacity legislation to make it compatible with Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD). This Article requires signatory states to ensure respect for legal capacity on an equal basis for all citizens regardless of their level of disability.

We or our families have suffered (in some cases terribly) by being 'sectioned' or subjected to compulsory treatment, on the opinion of a psychiatrist, without any test of the evidence by an impartial and independent court, the treatment being neither necessary nor proportionate in a democratic society.

Respect for legal capacity means that people with a mental impairment are able to have the same control over their lives and take the same risks as anyone without a mental impairment in the same circumstances. It means that they are supported to make their own decisions. It means that their Advance Statements, and the decisions made on their behalf by Attorneys or Guardians whom they have appointed and whom they trust, are respected and only over-ridden when there are compelling reasons for doing so. It means that when they are unable to make a decision for themselves there is an obligation to determine and put into effect the decision that person would have made if he/she did not have that mental impairment.

If the state could not lawfully interfere with the same decision when made by a person of sound mind in the same circumstances, it should not be lawful for it to interfere with the decision of the person with a mental impairment.

(Photo : Jacqueline Gale, who died in February 2016 while detained in hospital under a Compulsory Treatment Order issued to West Lothian Council / NHS Lothian.)