Argentines Seek Mental Health Reform

Argentina's Supreme Court president, Ricardo Lorenzetti, called for coordinated action to reform his country's mental health system to ensure better human rights protections for the mentally ill, at the launch of a workshop on "Mental Health and Human Rights," organized by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in Buenos Aires in late March.

The aim of the workshop was to develop short- and long-term strategies for mental health reform in Argentina, with a focus on community-based treatment programs and deinstitutionalization of people with mental disabilities.

In his remarks, Lorenzetti noted that two recent rulings by Argentina's highest court upheld the rights of people with mental disabilities and represented significant advances in their legal status. He said the greater challenge is to develop "coordinated public policies" in this area. "No decision alone will resolve these problems. Judicial decisions are messages for the other powers of the state," he said.

Lawrence Gostin, director of the PAHO/WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., emphasized the need to counter myths about people with mental disabilities—particularly the idea that they are "dangerous" and "incompetent"—as well as the importance of involving the judicial system, the public health sector, international agencies such as PAHO and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), as well as mental health consumers and their families in the process of mental health reform.

PAHO/WHO Representative José Antonio Pagés called on health workers to get actively involved in human rights and mental health issues.

"The right to health is fundamental," he said. "It's not just rhetoric. These are moral and also legal obligations."

Other participants in the workshop included Santiago Cantón, IACHR executive secretary; JavierVásquez, PAHO regional advisor on human rights; and Jorge Rodríguez, PAHO regional advisor on mental health.