The application of human right frameworks is an increasingly important part of efforts to accelerate progress in global mental health. Much of this has been driven by several influential legal and policy instruments, most notably the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as the World Health Organization’s QualityRights Tool Kit and Mental Health Action Plan. Despite these significant developments, however, much more needs to be done to prevent human rights violations. This chapter focuses on (...) a critical component of this broader challenge, which is the question of how best to regulate and reduce the use of coercive measures. The recent literature on coercion in psychiatry – which addresses involuntary commitment, seclusion, restraint, and forced medication – represents a useful resource that can help guide tractable solutions in global mental health. These issues are evaluated from the perspective of global health governance, and several general recommendations are made in order to improve monitoring and enforcement, provide guidance for domestic legislative reform, and strengthen health systems. (shrink)

During the past 20 years, states have increasingly expanded the lists of individuals who are obligated to report their suspicions of child abuse and neglect. These legal requirements are juxtaposed with ethical considerations in research and professional practice. The ethical issues include the obligation to maintain both confidentiality of information provided by human participants and the safety and protection of these participants. This article reviews the types of state child abuse reporting statutes and outlines the categories of mandated reporters. I (...) develop a model of how individual researchers should approach deciding whether they are mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect. (shrink)

During the past 20 years, states have increasingly expanded the lists of individuals who are obligated to report their suspicions of child abuse and neglect. These legal requirements are juxtaposed with ethical considerations in research and professional practice. The ethical issues include the obligation to maintain both confidentiality of information provided by human participants and the safety and protection of these participants. This article reviews the types of state child abuse reporting statutes and outlines the categories of mandated reporters. I (...) develop a model of how individual researchers should approach deciding whether they are mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect. (shrink)

In the following paper I will analyse three key themes characteristic of the life and work of Marisha Márkus. This paper was originally read for a conference on her work at the time of her farewell from the University of New South Wales in 2002. Success, Needs and Decency are signature themes that percolate through her work. Under the theme of success I turn to central ideas in her early sociology of women and to the meaning of success in (...) the world of the life of women. This theme has a particular existential theme for Marisha, who nursed her eldest son Gyuri for the last 30 years of her life. The concept of radical needs was a central concept of the work of the Budapest School. Marisha’s relatively less well-known interpretation of needs is arguably the most fully democratic reading of this theme that came to be better known in the work of Agnes Heller. I finally turn to the concept of decency, which for Márkus adds value to the key ideal of civil society that became so important in the transition of so-called socialist societies during the collapse of the communist regimes in the Eastern bloc. (shrink)