Dainius Pūras

(August 2021)
Hannah, J., Barsky, B. and Pūras, D, pp 29-43 in: Mental Health, Legal Capacity, and Human Rights. Editors: Stein, M., Mahomed, F., Sunkel, C. and Patel, V., Cambridge University Press

Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequities for people with psychosocial disabilities producing in its wake a serious obstacle for mental health policymakers and advocates committed to upholding Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. To overcome this obstacle, stakeholders must resist a common tendency in international mental health policymaking: to over-invest in interventions that arise from a biomedical conception of mental illness. Instead, the pandemic is an opportunity to look beyond the dominant biomedical framework in international mental health care – which has a record of undermining Article 12 principles like legal capacity, autonomy, and self-determination – toward one based on human rights. This shift in positionality will serve to uphold Article 12 and help fulfill the spectrum of human rights for people with psychosocial disabilities. Read more …

(June 2020)

Chapman, A., Williams, C., Hannah, J. and Pūras, D., Health and Human Rights. 22 (1), 1-6

When we planned the special section of this issue and distributed our call for papers, we wanted to present a collection that would reflect our view that not only is there is no health without mental health, but there is no mental health without human rights. We were hopeful that papers from around the world would illustrate human rights-based approaches to easing mental distress, critique the status quo in how we understand and respond to mental health, and illuminate the scale of suffering that arises from our unequal, racist, discriminatory, and violent world. The issue was timed to coincide with guest editor Dainius Pūras’s completion of his second and final term as United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the right to health. Mental health has been a special focus of his mandate, resulting in several reports on the subject, and he also contributed to the two UN resolutions affirming mental health as a human right. In his most recent report to the UN General Assembly and in his final report to the Human Rights Council, Pūras examines the social determinants of mental health and calls for discussions and actions that are “rights-based, holistic and rooted in the lived experience of those left furthest behind by harmful sociopolitical systems, institutions and practices.” Of great relevance now to our post-pandemic world, he stresses that these discussions are needed at global, regional, and national levels to better understand the collective failures of the status quo in mental health systems. Read more …

(2019)

Pūras, Dainius Hannah, J, in The Routledge Handbook of International Development, Mental Health and Wellbeing, Editor: Davidson, L., Routledge. 222- 234. 9780367027735

Abstract:
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development signals an ambitious political commitment towards transforming our world into a more just, peaceful and inclusive global community. This chapter explores the importance of the consensus that mental health is a human development imperative, in addition to the need for scaled-up investments to promote health and wellbeing for all. It focuses on where this consensus fractures, using human rights, including the right to health, both to locate the debates on closing the mental health treatment gap, and to contextualise the urgent need to address the current systemic human rights crisis of contemporary mental health care. The chapter argues that the dominant biomedical model is no longer compliant with the right to health, examining how the evolving normative, social and scientific landscape demands a paradigm shift to uphold international legal obligations, strengthen the practice of medicine, and improve health and wellbeing. Read more …

(January 2017)

Pūras, D. and Hannah, J. BMJ 2017, 356

Drug Prohibition, including criminalisation to regulate the supply and demand of controlled substances, has had devastating effects on human rights and public health worldwide.

Prohibition as an international policy response gives rise to illicit drug markets governed by criminal networks and regulated by violence. The poor and marginalised communities in which illicit drugs are cultivated, transited, or sold are disproportionately affected. States have responded with increased law enforcement, escalating violence and further destabilising communities. Parallel violent pursuits both to protect and to topple illicit markets have been linked to large scale displacement, femicide, and an overall decrease in life expectancy, such as in Mexico.

Mass incarceration to enforce prohibition has overburdened criminal justice systems and left countless people languishing in deplorable facilities in inhumane conditions around the world.2 Criminalisation of possession means that a fifth of … Read more …