Mental health law is a feature of mental health systems around the world, so legislative reform is an important way to advance compliance with the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This paper provides an overview of India's Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 in the context of Articles 12 (‘Equal recognition before the law’) and 14 (‘Liberty and security of person’). Notwithstanding the potential of law to produce change, exclusive or disproportionate emphasis on law draws attention from other areas in need of equal if not greater reform, such as public education, mental health services, physical healthcare, social care networks, criminal justice systems, and gathering political backing for the profound reforms needed to transform the socio-economic landscapes in which mental illness develops, diagnoses are made, treatment is provided (or not provided), recovery occurs (or does not occur), and social citizenship is protected and promoted (or eroded and obstructed). There is a particular issue with misunderstandings of psychiatry in academic discussions of mental health legislation which appears to stem from lack of engagement with the full diversity of service-user views and the evidence base for psychiatric care. Greater recognition of upstream factors that shape both suffering and services would acknowledge that the decisions of politicians and service managers have a much greater impact on rights, especially the right to treatment and support, than the decisions of individual clinicians whose options are often very limited at the level of individual care. India's legislation seeks to address not only individual-level care, but also this higher level of reform through its articulation of an explicit ‘right to access mental healthcare and treatment’. Similar multi-level legislative reform elsewhere would increase cooperation from all stakeholders, improve compliance with the CRPD, and help move towards zero coercion in mental health services.

精神卫生法是世界各地精神卫生体系的一个特点，因此立法改革是促进遵守联合国《残疾人权利公约》（CRPD）的重要途径。本文根据第 12 条（“法律面前的平等承认”）和第 14 条（“人身自由和安全”）概述了 2017 年印度《精神卫生保健法》。尽管法律具有产生变革的潜力，但对法律的排他性或不成比例的重视引起了其他需要平等甚至更大改革的领域的关注，例如公共教育、心理健康服务、身体保健、社会护理网络、刑事司法系统和为改变精神疾病发展、诊断、提供（或不提供）治疗、康复（或不康复）以及保护和促进社会公民身份的社会经济格局所需的深刻改革收集政治支持（或侵蚀和阻碍）。在精神卫生立法的学术讨论中，存在着一个对精神病学的误解的特殊问题，这似乎源于缺乏对服务使用者观点的全面多样性和精神科护理的证据基础的参与。对造成痛苦和服务的上游因素的更多认识将承认政治家和服务管理者的决策对权利，特别是获得治疗和支持的权利的影响比个人临床医生的决定要大得多，因为个人临床医生的选择往往非常有限。个人护理水平。印度的立法不仅旨在解决个人层面的护理问题，而且还通过明确阐明“获得精神保健和治疗的权利”来解决更高层次的改革。其他地方类似的多层次立法改革将增加所有利益相关者的合作，改善对《残疾人权利公约》的遵守，并有助于实现精神卫生服务的零强迫。