The Public Mental Health Framework (PMHF): Thinking About Law as Medicine
Kay Wilson1, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne Carlton 1Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, Carlton, VIC, Australia
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to many structural health inequities, the limitations of individualized clinical medicine and the power of law and policy to protect health and longevity. As the world moves beyond the pandemic two questions emerge: (1) can a similar public health approach be used effectively to tackle other health issues like mental health? and (2) how can law and policy be used to prevent mental-ill health and promote well-being? This paper provides a brief overview of the Public Mental Health Framework (PMHF) an innovative new conceptual framework to guide and co-ordinate legal and policy development. It explains why governments ought to use law and policy with a view to creating a mentally healthy society. It also explains how the PMHF draws upon three areas of research (which have been developing separately over the last 20-30 years) : (i) the social determinants of health (SDH) and mental health (SDMH), including the Commercial Determinants of Health (CDOH); (ii) health and human rights; and (ii) the social model of disability, as a model to inform law and policy-making. While the PMHF stretches the scope of traditional public health law, the re-conceptualisation of all law and policy as important public health tools has an important role in raising the stakes about the social and health implications of law and policy-making, while shaping future debate and research.
Biography
Dr Kay Wilson, Melbourne Post-Doctoral Research Fellow and Co-Convenor of the Disability Law Network (DLN), Melbourne Law School, is a lawyer, scholar, and writer with an interest in mental health, disability, and human rights law and the COVID-19 pandemic. She has a Bachelor of Arts and Laws and an Honours Degree in Psychology from Monash University and a PhD in law from the University of Melbourne. She is author of Mental Health Law: Abolish or Reform? (OUP, 2021) and lead editor of a collection entitled The Future of Mental Health, Disability and Criminal Law (Routledge, 2023 forthcoming). She is also published in Australian and international peer-reviewed journals such as, University of New South Wales Law Journal, Medical Law Review, Human Rights Law Review, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, and Personality and Individual Differences. Her Melbourne Post-Doctoral Fellowship Project which she started in March 2022 is entitled, “Mental Health and Public Health: Thinking About Law as Medicine.” Kay has also been course coordinator for the NDIS and Disability Benefits Law Clinic at Melbourne Law School in 2021 and 2022. More recently she has been engaging with media and published “Building Mentally Healthy Workplaces” in Pursuit.
Kay has also been a researcher on Professor McSherry’s Rethinking Mental Health Laws and Seclusion and Restraint Projects and has published papers in Australian and international journals. In 2015, she won the Dontas Travelling Fellowship to Greece to give a paper on seclusion and restraint.