Measuring the impact of revised mental health legislation on human rights in Queensland, Australia
Open accessAbstract
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) (CRPD) has been instrumental for initiating and shaping the reform of mental health legislation in many countries, including the eight Australian jurisdictions. Multiple approaches have been proposed to assess and monitor the compliance of States Parties' mental health legislation with the CRPD, and to evaluate its success in protecting and promoting the human rights of people with disabilities. This article reports an effort to index the impact of legislation on human rights by measuring changes in the prevalence of compulsory treatment orders applied to people with mental illness after the introduction of CRPD influenced mental health legislation in the Australian state of Queensland. We found that despite reforms intended to enhance patient autonomy, the prevalence of compulsory treatment orders increased after implementation of the new legislation. Possible reasons behind this unintended consequence of the legislative reform may include a lack of systematized voluntary alternatives to compulsory treatment, a paternalistic and restrictive culture in mental health services and risk aversion in clinicians and society. We recommend that the reforms in mental health policy as well as legislation need to go further in order to achieve the goals embodied in the human rights framework of the CRPD.
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Legislative changes have had minimal impact on the high rates of community treatment order use in Australia.
“However, legislative changes have had minimal impact on the high rates of CTO use in Australia (Gill et al., 2020).”
From The benefits and harms of community treatment orders for people diagnosed with psychiatric illnesses: A rapid umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses (2024) · cites this paper as Gill et al., 2020
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- Authors
- Gill, N. S., Amos, A., Muhsen, H., Hatton, J., Ekanayake, C., & Kisely, S.
- Affiliations
- Griffith University (AU)
- James Cook University (AU)
- The University of Queensland (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Gill, Neeraj S.
- Venue
- International Journal of Law and Psychiatry
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2020-11
- Volume
- 73
- Pages
- 101634
- ISSN
- 0160-2527 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3092670957
- Cited by
- 24
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 4 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 0.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- International Journal of Law and Psychiatry (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- ResearchOnline at James Cook University (James Cook University) (submittedVersion, public-domain)
- Griffith Research Online (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- Griffith University
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Healthcare Decision-Making and Restraints
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health, Medicine and Society
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Rights and Representation
- Keywords
- Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, mental health law reform, human rights of people with mental illness, patient autonomy, Queensland, unintended consequences of legislation
- MeSH terms
- Involuntary Treatment, Mental Disorders, Persons with Disabilities, Disabled Persons, Health Policy, Humans, Human Rights, Mental Health, Queensland, Prevalence, Personal Autonomy, Patient Rights
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