An analysis of the legal impact on persons with a psychiatric diagnostic: legal capacity and the subject of rights reinterpreted in the light of the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Abstract

Abstract:
Legal capacity is build-up on the concepts of rationality and capability, which exclude persons with mental illness. Although the notion of mental illness is highly subjective and dependent on historical and sociocultural contexts, the representation on the collective imagination of persons with mental illness tends to identify them by the negative characteristics associated to their diagnosis. The paper reviews how these traditional legal notions, together with the collective imagination representation of the mentally ill, have an impact on the way law has treated persons with a psychiatric diagnostic. It has approached issues that concern them mainly through normative differences and justifying its rights limitations. This work focuses the analysis on the differenced treatment imposed by the civil institution of guardianship and the best interest criterion of interpretation used tojustify it, which are both rejected by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) and replaced by decision support models and by the criterion of the will and preferences. These new values of interpretation of the legal capacity, and thus of the constitution of the subject of rights, are incompatible with the traditional and dominant approach in the current legal systems, despite they coexist now. The paper also analyses the most significant case law on this issue and highlights the value of the courts to adjust the current institutions to the new parameters of interpretation. Finally, it considers how the impact of the change of paradigm on the notions of legal capacity and subject of rights might transform the way society recognizes the person with a mental illness and its own identification, towards a less negative representation of mental illness.