Chrysalis

Mad Pride Ireland takes as its starting point that it is not possible to lose one’s legal capacity.  Legal capacity is the recognition given by a legal system to the agency and choice of individuals.  It is not a quantity to be measured but a right that all human beings have to consider ourselves as the final arbiter in our own lives, and to be recognized as such by others.

The CRPD (Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities) adopts this view of legal capacity by requiring States Parties to recognize that “persons with disabilities enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life.”  Legal capacity instrumentalizes the principle of “respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to make one’s own choices, and independence of persons” that is among the governing principles of the CRPD.

The social model of disability tells us that the burden of bridging a gap in worldview, or of accommodating mental/emotional diversity, cannot be placed on people with psychosocial disabilities.  Instead, it is a collective responsibility of society to design inclusive standards establishing the parameters of personal choice and autonomy (i.e. as limited by criminal law and civil obligations, such as an obligation to one’s spouse and children), and inclusive processes for conducting the legal formalities pertaining to such choices.

Mad Pride Ireland involved itself with a discussion group facilitated by Amnesty Ireland over the past 12 months, this group included members covering areas like Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Brain Acquired Injury, Intellectual Disability and Mental Health among others.  It was during this process that we believed it was vitally important to the human rights of the mad community that we submit our own proposal to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality and Defence as we felt strongly that a compromised proposal that hoped to cover so many diverse areas would only fail those people we are hoping to help.

The proposed Capacity Legislation is a hugely important piece of work that will have wide ranging effects on the lives of those living with the normality of madness. This is why we feel it necessary to show there are other opinions in this area.

Emotional distress, without sounding to philosophical, is a disease of the soul not of the brain.  Madness does not degenerate brain function in the same way as say Alzheimer’s does and so should not be dealt with in the same way.  Capacity deals with our ability to make decisions, it does not deal with the merit or otherwise of those decisions, and we would argue that at no point does someone with emotional problems loose the capacity to make decisions.

The starting point for many of the opinions that will have been submitted to this committee will be that capacity is lost, a position that we argue does not apply to mental health.  If this is to happen, that this legislation is drawn up from this starting point of the ‘loss’ of capacity then the review of the Mental Health Act 2001 will be coloured and the basic human rights of the mad community will again be ignored.

Madness may cause an individual to make poor decisions, life itself can and does cause people to make poor decisions, but what cannot be argued is that those with emotional problems have lost their decision making capacity.

We need to develop a service that will help users come to the best decision for them, the individual, while also respecting their decision to disagree.  This will require a sea change in thinking from you, our policy makers and from the service providers.  It will take courage of thought and conviction.  The easy route is to take a compromise position, tick the box for compliance with the UNCRPD and move on.  That would be a ‘poor decision’ and would lead me to ask have you the capacity to decide on the future treatment of those within the mental health services.

There are no easy roads in this area, nor should there be.  But we should all be cognisant of the very busy roads our mental health services are heading into.  The financial crisis of the past number of years, growing unemployment and debt will only increase the need for these services and if they are not equipped and designed to deal with this we are heading toward many tragedies.

So where is it we need to go?  We hear a lot about community facilities and multi disciplinarily teams but we are not seeing the result of this talk where it matters, on the ground within our communities.  We all have a responsibility to ourselves and our neighbours, we need to take that responsibility more seriously and empower our communities to tackle issues of loneliness, isolation and emotional distress as a community.

Mad Pride Ireland is looking at this right now with the HSE, we hope to facilitate discussions within our communities to help identify their individual problems and to work with them to put in place unique solutions that they will own and control.  This is a plan to empower communities and the individuals within them. It is time for us all to take control not to be reliant on others or the state to make the first steps.

Keep in touch with us at www.madprideireland.ie and follow our progress, and maybe even get involved.