Mental Health Care Bill - Right to CONFIDENTIALITY OF DATA WITHHELD ?

.....And an audience to SEE your ‘care’ for FREE?


Once Individuals with serious mental illness enter the portals of the care centres defined as 'mental health establishments' in the Mental health Care Bill - which won’t be easy after all the legal documentation -> one would be offered a platter of treatments.
The Bill is silent on the kinds of treatments which would be offered. Also silent on a prescribed fundamental standard of care to meet the varying degrees of cognitive impairments and complex medical needs of individuals with serious mental illness.

Strange when the constitution of India one of the few constitutions in the world spells out ‘scientific temper.’
Most of the print and electronic media in India short of slobbering and falling at the Government of India’s feet has been hailing the Bill as a ‘revolution’ after constantly publishing photographs of bewildered individuals with mental illness foraging garbage, peeping through windows complacently from one of the forty Government Mental Hospitals in India or chained by their families and claiming that all the families in India who have a family member with Mental illness are ‘dumped’ in Tiger Reserves or out to get their property and this much before the Land Acquisition Bill was passed by our Parliament. Most of the print media have gone on to say that our government is benevolent and compassionate for being so generous to bestow our family members with serious mental illness ‘rights’. 

Somewhere it was missed out that yet another crucial right has been withheld. ->the Right to Confidentiality Data. So the case history, a source of great vulnerability for individuals with serious mental illness would be *poached*.

The Mental Health Care Bill –No Priority Right to Care for individuals with serious mental illness but priority...

cartels -mental health establishments with NO prescribed fundamental standard of Care...?

The Wayand district of Kerala where the Kabini river originates, is rich in biodiversity. The tribal population living in this district is surrounded by medicinal plants and they possess the traditional knowledge of their properties.

It stands to reason that the intense, overwhelming feelings of despair and hopelessness, precursors to dying by suicide would be averted if these plants had those properties to chase away those thoughts. If plucking leaves from medicinal plants and eating them was a remedy, most of the tribals would be alive today which is not what is happening; deaths by suicides are only increasing.

As reported in the print media which appeared in 
- The New Indian Express dated 08 September 2012 which is given below -
Tribal suicide rates escalate in Wayanad
Tribal suicides are increasing in Wayanad, thanks to the burgeoning economic distress among tribals. A majority of the tribals here are agricultural workers. In the 2011 survey, it was found that there was a dramatic decline in the total number of working days available in the agrarian sector. Out of the 43,428 men who got work, only 31.02 percent got work for more than 180 days. The number for women is a mere 10.55 percent. The drastic decline in paddy cultivation, the total area for which shrank from 30,000 hectare in 1980 to 7,000 by 2001, seems to have taken a heavy toll on the livelihood of these women. It is said that even the MNREGS could not attract many tribals. “The delay in the payment of wages made the tribals indifferent to the Centre’s flagship employment guarantee scheme,” an official said. “For many years, small scale farmers haven’t been able to do cultivation in a sustainable way. The tribal workers who depended on these farmers started migrating to neighbouring states in search of work. Migration may alter the tribal social fabric in myriad ways,” said E G Joseph, former joint director of the department of ST Development.

The Mental Health Care Bill which is in the website of the Rajya Sabha in CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY Defiinitions states that -

(o) “mental health establishment” means any health establishment, including Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy establishment, by whatever name called, either wholly or partly, meant for the care of persons with mental illness, established, owned, controlled or maintained by the appropriate Government, local authority, trust, whether private or public, corporation, co-operative society, organisation or any other entity or person, where persons with mental illness are admitted and reside at, or kept in, for care, treatment, convalescence and rehabilitation, either temporarily or otherwise; and includes any general hospital or general nursing home established or maintained by the appropriate Government, local authority, trust, whether private or public, corporation, co-operative society, organisation or any other entity or person; but does not include a family residential place where a person with mental illness resides with his relatives or friends;
It is relevant to note that- 
1. That no fundamental standard of care with the essential skills for giving care are prescribed for these establishments which is vital for the ongoing care of the vast majority of individuals with serious mental illness in India who are living with varying degrees of cognitive impairments and complex medical needs.

2. With powers being vested on all kinds of establishments through legislation, cartels of mental health establishments using the taxpayers’ money would be administering ‘herbal’ remedies through pills, teas, potions etc. before offering any empirical evidence and  peer review of their bioavailability, efficacy and safety.

3. This despite the fact that these remedies are not saving the lives of the tribal population of Wayanad in Kerala who are living amidst the rich flora and fauna of medicinal plants with traditional knowledge yet dying by suicide.
Links to –
1. Article in the New Indian Express
http://newindianexpress.com/states/kerala/Tribal-suicide-rates-escalate-in-Wayanad/2013/09/08/article1773911.ece
2.The Mental Health Care Bill as introduced in Rajya Sabha http://164.100.24.219/BillsTexts/RSBillTexts/asintroduced/Mentlcare-E%20I.pdf