76038 Law and Mental Health

Description

This subject provides students with an introduction to law and mental health. Students explore legal frameworks for coercive mental health interventions encountered by people with psychosocial and cognitive disability and critically reflect on these in the context of broader consideration of law’s role in enabling and responding to violence and inequality. The application of current legal doctrine and practices are examined as well as alternatives offered by international human rights norms and domestic law reform proposals. The subject takes an interdisciplinary approach to analysing and evaluating law, which centres narratives and perspectives of the disability community and also draws on legal doctrine, law reform reports, international human rights commentary, empirical research and critical scholarship. Students learn directly from members of the disability community, including through guest lectures. Taking an intersectional approach, the subject interrogates the relationships between law, mental health, ableism, settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy. As a result of successfully completing this subject, students have a deepened appreciation for the importance in law and policy work of directly engaging with the disability community. They also have increased skills in advocating for and working alongside people with psychosocial and cognitive disability, identifying systemic legal issues relating to coercive mental health interventions and evaluating the efficacy of different analytical perspectives and legal reform options in relation to contemporary debates about law and mental health.