Indian Laws concerning Mental Health and Their Development

Abstract

For a long time, mental health was pushed to the side-lines in India’s legal and healthcare systems, but things have changed dramatically over the past hundred years. We’ve moved from a system that basically locked people away under the 1912 Indian Lunacy Act to one that actually focuses on patients’ rights and puts them at the centre, thanks to the Mental Healthcare Act of 2017. This paper looks at how this change happened, showing how global human rights ideas, our constitution, and public health needs have all played a part in changing how India deals with mental illness. The paper talks about what makes the 2017 Act special – things like giving people the right to mental healthcare that they can actually access and afford, letting patients make advance directives and choose representatives, and setting up Mental Health Review Boards to protect what patients want for themselves. But it also looks at the real problems we still face when trying to make this work – like the shame people feel about mental health, not having enough trained professionals, and people simply not knowing what their legal rights are. Using recent research and looking at what works in other countries, the paper suggests some practical solutions – bringing mental health services into regular healthcare, creating more community programs to help people recover, and making sure people understand their legal rights better. The goal is to close the gap between what the law says and what actually happens in people’s lives. In the end, the paper makes the point that real progress isn’t just about changing laws – it’s about making sure that everyone dealing with mental health issues gets treated with respect, fairness, and kindness.

Introduction

Mental health is a fundamental human right, just as physical health is, but people with mental illnesses have all too frequently been disregarded, stigmatized, or denied rights. When mental health rights are not acknowledged, people may be forced into institutions against their will, denied care, mistreated, or denied access to decision-making processes. The fact that a person has a mental health condition should never be used as a reason to deny him or her human rights, or to deny the person a say in his or her health care. In fact, violations of human rights occur on a daily basis throughout the world for persons with mental health conditions, including forced admission and treatment, confinement and isolation, the denial of basic rights to food and housing, discrimination, exclusion from the community, and the denial of the right to vote or marry. In the absence of community-based services, long-term psychiatric hospitals or other facilities (which are often associated with human rights abuses) become the only place to receive mental health care.¹

To address that and guarantee justice, respect, and dignity in mental health systems, legislation is necessary. When the need is large and largely unmet, when those with mental health disorders are denied proper care and also face discrimination, isolation, and violations of their rights, laws that govern the treatment and protection of those with mental disorders are important. It considers how well the current laws in India have worked and whether they are achieving their objectives by examining the evolution of mental health laws in the country. International frameworks such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) recognize mental health as a component of human dignity and overall well-being. These are upheld in the articles of the Indian Constitution that guarantee equality, life, and individual freedom. Given that mental health is recognized as a human right rather than a welfare concern, it is something that any individual can claim, demand of the health-care system, and seek through the legal process if their rights are violated.

Importance of Mental Health

A vital component of both society and individual lives is mental health. Relationships with friends, family, and the community are all impacted by poor mental health, as is our general well-being and capacity to work. Conditions related to mental health are not unusual. Every year, hundreds of millions of people suffer from them, and many more do so throughout their lives. According to estimates, one in five men and one in three women will suffer from serious depression at some point in their lives.² Other illnesses, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, are less prevalent but can significantly affect. Many people are uncomfortable discussing their symptoms with medical experts or others they know, and therapy is frequently inadequate or of low quality.

The Indian legal system’s approach to mental health

Mental health today is widely acknowledged as a vital component of a person’s overall well- being. However, for much of legal history, individuals living with mental illness were viewed more as social risks than as people needing care. India’s legal evolution in this area has been gradual but transformative — shifting from a custodial model rooted in fear and neglect, to a framework that centres dignity, personal liberty, and access to health care.³ This transition marks a broader cultural realization that those experiencing mental illness deserve the same respect and rights as every other citizen. The first major legislation governing mental health in India was the Indian Lunacy Act, 1912. Emerging from British colonial influence, it primarily emphasized confinement and surveillance. People with mental illness were often removed from community life and sent to asylums where conditions were frequently harsh and isolating. Legal protection was nearly non-existent, and questions of personal consent or autonomy rarely entered decision-making. The law sought to “manage” individuals considered troublesome, rather than help them recover. After independence, India gradually adopted a more humane approach. With the rise of global human rights discourse and improvements in psychiatric science, the need for reform became undeniable. This resulted in the Mental Health Act, 1987, which finally replaced the outdated Lunacy Act. The 1987 law shifted attention from punishment to medical treatment and introduced regulatory mechanisms such as licensing mental health facilities. While it represented progress, the focus still leaned toward institutional treatment and did not fully protect individual liberties or promote community-based rehabilitation — areas increasingly seen worldwide as essential to recovery. The true turning point came when India ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) in 2007. This international commitment reframed mental health as a human rights issue rather than merely a medical one. Persons with psychosocial disabilities were recognized as capable of making choices about their lives, challenging longstanding paternalistic assumptions. This new outlook laid the groundwork for historic legal reform.

The result was the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, often praised as one of the most progressive mental health statutes in the world. It converts access to mental health care into an enforceable legal right. The Act obligates the State to provide affordable and accessible services, ensuring that people can receive treatment close to their communities. One of its key features is the option of an advance directive, allowing an individual to specify future treatment preferences during a crisis. The Act also enables appointment of nominated representatives to support decision-making while safeguarding autonomy. These reforms elevate patient choice and reject outdated stereotypes that equate mental illness with incapacity.
Several specific protections further strengthen individual rights. The Act mandates confidentiality of medical information, bans cruel or degrading treatment, and prioritizes rehabilitation within the community as opposed to long-term institutionalization. A landmark provision decriminalizes attempted suicide and directs the State to provide care instead of punishment. Mental Health Review Boards are established as oversight bodies to prevent abuse and ensure that all admissions and treatment respect patient rights. Taken together, the MHCA 2017 firmly embeds equality and dignity into the legal framework.
Constitutional guarantees reinforce this progress. Article 21 of the Constitution has been interpreted to include the right to health and dignified treatment, making mental health protection a constitutional obligation.⁴ Articles 14 and 15 prohibit discriminatory practices, ensuring that mental illness cannot serve as a basis for exclusion from employment, education, or public life. Public health initiatives, such as the National Mental Health Programme (NMHP), work alongside legislation to expand services and bring rights-based care to underserved populations.
India’s journey from outdated asylum-based laws to a system grounded in agency and human rights demonstrates significant progress. Nevertheless, the success of these protections depends on continued enforcement, increased awareness, and stronger mental health infrastructure. The law now recognizes individuals living with mental illness as full rights-holders — and ensuring those rights are meaningfully realized remains the country’s most important challenge ahead.

Essential Elements of Mental Health Care Act Of 2017

The rights of people suffering from mental illness

The Mental Healthcare Act of 2017 people can get good mental health care that doesn’t cost too much and is easy to find. It protects the dignity and rights of people dealing with mental health issues and lets them make their own choices. This law is because it’s the first one in India’s history to actually mental healthcare from government programs, not just a privilege.

The act covers all sorts of services that people with mental health conditions should be able to use. This includes staying in hospitals when needed, getting outpatient treatment, rehabilitation programs both in hospitals and in the community, special services for and elderly people, halfway houses, and supported living arrangements.⁵

The law also makes it clear that people with mental health problems deserve to live with dignity and shouldn’t have to put up with cruel or humiliating treatment at any mental health facility. Beyond that, the act gives people an important right. They can stay in touch with family and friends, get legal help when they need it, file complaints if they’re not getting proper care, their own medical records, keep their information private, be treated fairly without discrimination, live in their communities rather than being, and get the information they need about their care.

Advance Directive: Preserving Individual Independence

The Act presents the idea of an advance directive, which enables people to write down the type of care they would like or reject in the event that they are no longer able to make decisions for themselves. In the past, medical paternalism has dominated the field of mental health, this clause acknowledges that even in the midst of severe episodes, the individual is capable of making well-informed decisions. In order to maintain autonomy at the centre of care decisions, professionals are required to adhere to the directive unless special permission is acquired to.

Selected Delegates for Assistive Decision-Making

According to the Act, an individual can designate a friend, relative, or other trusted person as their nominated representative to help them make decisions about their treatment.⁶ This feature supports decision-making rather than substituting for it, which is in line with the UNCRPD mandate.

Safeguarding Rights in Mental Health Facilities

MHCA 2017 establishes a number of protections for mental health facilities. Those rights include the freedom from harsh, inhuman, or degrading treatment; privacy; and protection against abuse.⁷ To guarantee there are no violations of dignity, there are stringent guidelines pertaining to admissions processes, seclusion, physical constraints, and how treated. Institutions are subject to routine inspections, have to keep accurate records, and continue to answer to review boards.

Rights of Individuals Receiving Medical Treatment

Specifically, the Act guarantees:

• The entitlement to knowledge regarding disease and available therapies.
• Privacy rights with reference to medical records.
• Availability of health insurance and legal services.
• The ideal care model is community-based rehabilitation.⁸

These clauses acknowledge that social inclusion rather than isolation is what promotes mental health recovery.

Decriminalizing Suicide Attempts

By recognizing suicide attempts as signs of extreme suffering that call for assistance rather than punishment, Section 115 of the Act decriminalizes them.⁹ The Indian Penal Code’s Section 309 was previously used to convict attempted suicide. Instead, the MHCA 2017 recognizes self-harm behaviour as a mental health crisis and requires the State to offer therapy and rehabilitation.

Mental Health Review Boards: Supervision and Responsibility

The Act creates Mental Health Review Boards (MHRBs) to guarantee the protection of patie nt rights and the effective handling of complaints.¹⁰ These extrajudicial entities are able to:

• Examine the advance instructions.
• Determine the issues around the nominated representatives.
• Track involuntary admission cases.
• In the event that rights are violated, offer remedies.

Their establishment reinforces the legal safeguards that previous systems lacked.

Duty of the Government

The Act lays out the responsibilities of the federal and state governments in detail, including:

• Creating services in both rural and urban locations.
• Raising awareness to lessen stigma.
• Combining general health services with mental health services.¹¹

This multifaceted duty serves as further evidence that mental health is a vital public service.

Conformity to the Constitution and International Human Rights

The Act upholds Article 21 of the Constitution’s guarantee of life and dignity. It also reflects international human rights norms, particularly those concerning communal integration, equality, and non-discrimination. By ensuring that Indian regulations are in line with international legal obligations, this harmony raises the standard of care across the country.

Obstacle In Securing Rights Related to Mental Health Care

India has acknowledged the significance of maintaining people’s health and has underlined the necessity for a society in which all members are in good physical and mental health. Substance misuse, behavioural difficulties, and mental health issues are becoming increasingly prevalent in our healthcare systems as Indians’ health concerns change. For people who have them, these disorders can result in mortality, severe health issues, and disabilities. People tend to conceal mental health illnesses from others because there is still a lot of stigmas associated with them, which makes life much harder for those who suffer from them. Many factors influence the prevalence of mental health problems, including social and economic issues, environmental factors, people’s perceptions of their ability to handle stress, the many methods in which these conditions are defined and measured, and how we interpret the findings.

100 million Indians, according to numerous research, evaluations, in-depth assessments, and independent investigations, require adequate mental health care. Health and Family Welfare Minister JP Nadda informed the Lok Sabha in May 2016 that between 10 and 20 million Indians, or 1% of the population, suffer from severe mental diseases like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. By the end of 2005, he added, about 50 million people, or 5% of the population, suffered from common mental health conditions like anxiety and depression.¹² The prevalence of mental, behavioural, and drug addiction disorders, as well as the outcomes for those who experience them, are still unclear, despite numerous research indicating that mental health concerns are becoming worse.

The Indian government launched the National Mental Health Programme in 1982 to ensure that everyone has access to mental health treatment, particularly those who are vulnerable or lack adequate access to services, and to support the integration of mental health knowledge into routine healthcare and community development. Supporting mental wellbeing, preventing mental illness, treating those who are mentally ill, lowering stigma around mental health, and assisting those who are mentally ill in integrating into society and the economy are the goals of the program.

Recommendations and Way Forward

When India passed the Mental Healthcare Act in 2017, it formally acknowledged mental healthcare as a fundamental human right, marking a significant advancement. Recent studies, however, reveal that there is still a significant discrepancy between what the legislation says on paper and what happens in practice when people attempt to get mental health treatment. In order to provide useful recommendations on how India may close this gap and ensure that having mental health rights on the books truly translates into meaningful assistance for those in need, this article compiles the results of current scholarly research.

To Bring mental health support into everyday community and primary healthcare systems

In order to close the treatment gap, “integration of mental-health services into primary care is not optional.”¹³ Including mental health in primary care improves equity and pragmatism, as rural populations are sometimes far from specialized treatments. Training community-based workers, utilizing telehealth, and establishing referral channels were the methods used by nations that were successful in closing service gaps. Similar tactics must be used in India going forward, including mobile mental health teams, telepsychiatry centres connected to district hospitals, and community outreach initiatives that involve NGOs and local cultural networks.

Encourage peer support and rights-based community rehabilitation

In India, we still don’t give enough recognition to self-help, peer support, and community-based recovery programs.¹⁴ When people who’ve been through similar struggles help others, it really works—studies show it gets people more involved socially, cuts down on setbacks, and makes communities happier with their support systems. If we want to see more of this, state governments need to clearly define what peer workers should be doing, help fund these grassroots support groups, and make sure community centres get the ongoing financial support and guidance they need to keep going.

Adopt Ethical Measures for Tele-Mental Health

The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just boost telepsychiatry use – it also exposed some real problems with data security, how well people can handle digital technology, and basic tech infrastructure. Any tele-mental health platforms need to follow MHCA rules about letting patients make their own choices, making sure they understand what they’re agreeing to, and keeping their information private. We really need national policies that set basic standards and make sure these services work for people no matter what language they speak or where they live, plus we need to keep track of how well everything’s working.

To Boost responsibility, supervision, and understanding of the law

A lot of professionals, people using mental health services, and their families still don’t know what rights they have under the 2017 Mental Health Care Act. We really need to step up efforts to educate people about these legal protections, train police officers, doctors, and judges on these issues, and help individuals stand up for their rights. We also need independent watchdog groups, like Mental Health Review Boards, to keep track of when rights get violated, share information about how well the system is working, and provide help in ways that are easy for people to access and understand.

Conclusion

The way India thinks about people with mental health conditions has really changed over time, and you can see this shift in how the laws have evolved. Back in 1912, the Indian Lunacy Act basically treated people with mental illness like they needed to be locked away and kept separate from everyone else. But fast forward to 2017, and the Mental Healthcare Act takes a completely different approach – it’s all about protecting people’s rights and treating them with respect. Instead of seeing mental illness as something scary or dangerous, India now recognizes it as a matter of fairness, personal freedom, and human dignity. This isn’t just about changing some rules on paper – it’s a whole new way of thinking. The country now understands that mental health is actually a basic part of the right to life that’s promised in Article 21 of the Constitution. Experts say this change aligns with India’s commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which created a human rights approach to mental health issues.¹⁵ So, the 2017 Mental Healthcare Act is basically a new agreement with society that doesn’t just promise medical care, but also aims to give people more control over their lives and treat them with kindness. But like Kaul points out, writing good laws is only half the battle- you actually have to follow through on them. Even the best laws in the world won’t mean much if there isn’t proper accountability, understanding, and the right systems in place to make them work. India’s journey toward mental health fairness shows how the country has grown morally – moving from forcing treatment to giving people choices, from keeping quiet about mental health to speaking up, and from pushing people away to understanding them better. The real test now isn’t just following new laws, but making sure every person with mental health challenges is treated like they matter, with dignity and a place where they belong.

References

1. Mental health: Promoting and protecting human rights, [6 October 2023], available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/mental-health- promoting-and-protecting-human-rights (last visited on October 26, 2025).
2. Saloni Dattani, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Hannah Ritchie & Max Roser, “Mental Health” Our World in Data (2023) https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health (Online Resource).
3. A Kaul, “Evaluating India’s Mental Health Laws: Implementation, Benefits, and Challenges” (2024) 12(4) International Journal of Indian Psychology 350–357, DOI: 10.25215/1204.034.
4. Raghunath Misra, “Mental Health: Current Issues and Challenges in India” Journal of Comprehensive Health 5(2);5-8 doi:10.53553/JCH.v05i02.001.
5. Deependra Yadav & Namrata Yadav, “Mental Health Care Act 2017: Current Trends and Challenges in India” (2023) 10(1) Journal of Survey in Fisheries Sciences (special issue) DOI:10.53555/sfs. v10i1.3581.
6. Vijay Kumar Harbishettar, Arun Enara & Mahesh Gowda, “Making the Most of Mental Healthcare Act 2017” (2019) 61(Suppl 4) Indian Journal of Psychiatry S645-S649.
7. United Nations, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (adopted 13 December 2006, entered into force 3 May 2008) 2515 UNTS 3 (ratified by India 2007).

Footnotes

1. Mental health: Promoting and protecting human rights, [6 October 2023], available at:
   https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/mental-health-promoting-and-protecting-human- rights ↩︎
2. Saloni Dattani, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Hannah Ritchie & Max Roser, “Mental Health” Our World in Data
   (2023) https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health ↩︎
3. A Kaul, “Evaluating India’s Mental Health Laws: Implementation, Benefits, and Challenges” (2024) 12(4)
   International Journal of Indian Psychology 350–357, DOI: 10.25215/1204.034. ↩︎
4. Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India, AIR 1984 SC 802 ↩︎
5. Supra ↩︎
6. Mental Healthcare Act, No. 10 of 2017, § 14 (India); United Nations, Convention on the Rights of Persons
   with Disabilities (adopted 13 December 2006, entered into force 3 May 2008) 2515 UNTS 3 (ratified by India in 2007). ↩︎
7. Mental Healthcare Act, No. 10 of 2017, Chapter V, §§ 18–28 (India). ↩︎
8. Ibid., §20–27. ↩︎
9. Ibid., §115. ↩︎
10. Ibid., §73–77. ↩︎
11. Ibid., §29–31. ↩︎
12. Raghunath Misra, “Mental Health: Current Issues and Challenges in India” Journal of Comprehensive Health 5(2);5-8 doi:10.53553/JCH.v05i02.001 ↩︎
13. Deependra Yadav & Namrata Yadav, “Mental Health Care Act 2017: Current Trends and Challenges in India” (2023) 10(1) Journal of Survey in Fisheries Sciences (special issue) DOI:10.53555/sfs. v10i1.3581. ↩︎
14. Vijaykumar Harbishettar, Arun Enara & Mahesh Gowda, “Making the Most of Mental Healthcare Act 2017”
    (2019) 61(Suppl 4) Indian Journal of Psychiatry S645-S649. ↩︎
15. United Nations, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (adopted 13 December 2006, entered into force 3 May 2008) 2515 UNTS 3 (ratified by India 2007). ↩︎