The World Health Organization and Mental Health Law

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Since 1948, the World Health Organization (WHO) has done much to shape the evolution of mental health law. Their initial measures were often indirect, but they have recently assertively articulated the importance of legislation in health, including mental health. The inclusion of mental disorders in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) since 1949 has helped standardize mental health nomenclature in legislation. Later iterations of the ICD, including descriptions of conditions, further improved diagnostic reliability. In 1996, the WHO’s Mental Health Care Law: Ten Basic Principles was one of the organization’s earliest attempts to directly shape mental health legislation. From 2001, Project Atlas helped to identify countries without mental health legislation and countries with grossly outdated laws. The WHO has sought to address these deficits recently as part of the WHO Mental Health Action Plan 2013–2020. The most direct attempt at influencing international mental health law came in 2005 with the WHO’s Resource Book on Mental Health, Human Rights and Legislation. This provided extensive consideration of what should be addressed in mental health law and policy, and examined coercive treatments in detail. With the publication of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in 2006, the Resource Book was withdrawn. Even so, the Resource Book remains the most comprehensive consideration of the legislative needs of people with mental illness. QualityRights is now the CRPD-concordant WHO publication relating to mental health, including mental health legislation, and it contains an evaluation toolkit and teaching modules, among other resources.