Mental disorder as a legal fact: terminological aspect

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of mental disorder as a legal fact from a terminological perspective. The scientific analysis of the relevant normative sources carried out by the author made it possible to identify a terminological problem, which consists in the inconsistency of the use of terminology in international standards, criminal law, criminal procedural law, other laws and by-laws of Ukraine for the denoting of mental disorders.
  
             The emergence of terminological diversity at the level of international legal standards is confirmed, in which the terms “mental illness”, “mental disease”, “mental and behavioral disorders”, “mental disorder”, etc. are used. It is concluded that the lack of clear definition in the international legal field has led to incomplete consistency of this terminology in the criminal and criminal procedure legislation of Ukraine. 
             It is analyzed that the criminal procedure law, as well as the criminal law, reflects the use of different terms by the legislator to denote mental anomalies, while the range of categories used differs from the criminal law ones.
 It is found that the relevant Law of Ukraine On Psychiatric Care and the relevant by-laws also use different terminology: mental disorders, severe mental disorders, mental illness, mental and behavioral disorders, etc.
  It is concluded that the legal model of mental disorder is characterized by inconsistency in the use of terminology at the international, sectoral and intersectoral levels.   
 In order to overcome the unjustified synonymy, taking into account the arguments expressed by some experts regarding the expediency of deviating from the use of the terms “mental illness” and “mental disease”, it is proposed to support the proposal to replace these terms in the criminal and criminal procedure law with a more correct and non-stigmatizing category of “mental disorder”.