K-P's mental health act remains in limbo

Officials say legal complexity surrounding issue is creating a host of problems

PESHAWAR: The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa mental health act has not been finalised over the span of a year. This has resulted in a legislative lacuna on the subject. The act intends to protect the rights of individuals suffering from mental health issues.

Recently, the health department has urged the law department to clear the act of all legal impediments on an urgent basis. According to an official, the 18th Constitutional Amendment has categorised the subject as a provincial matter. He said the act was still not passed even though a committee has given its recommendation and redrafted the entire law.

According to a law department official, the legal complexity surrounding the issue has created countless problems.



“We sent the law back to the health department because the language of the law was not clear,” he said.

As per the official, mental health is a complicated subject, especially when it came to the legal jargon involved.

The official cited the fact that there were other bills from the department that were pending. The backlog of these bills had to be cleared for administrative purposes.

The process to clear the bill of all misleading interpretations has now been expedited and the revised bill will take up to a month to be completed. It will be sent for approval to the competent authority.

Striking similarity

The draft of the law, a copy of which is available with The Express Tribune, bears striking similarity with the Mental Health Ordinance, 2001.

Under the act, the provincial government is to establish psychiatric facilities with separate units for men, women, children and elders. Patients with a history of substance abuse are also included within the ambit of the law as substance abuse can cause behavioural changes.

However, a Mental Health Council is responsible for the establishment and maintenance of facilities under the proposed act. The council will provide pragmatic advice to the government on all issues pertaining to mental health and recommend measures to improve existing mental health services. It was also to establish child and adolescence, substance abuse/drug dependence, psychogeriatric, forensic, learning disability and community-based services. The council will also oversee the board of visitors.



The purpose of the board will be to keep a check on every aspect of the psychiatric facilities in the province. The council can ask the board to investigate a particular case, and look into cases where the patients have to manage their property and affairs.

The chairperson will be a retired judge of the high court, accompanied by three psychiatrists with one psychiatrist having a minimum experience of 10 years in government service, one prominent philanthropist/social worker and two medical practitioners with a minimum of 12 years of experience.

Protecting rights

The proposed draft chalks out an elaborate method of care and treatment both formal and informal on a voluntary basis.

There are four types of detention of a patient under the law – admission for assessment for 28 days, admission for treatment for six months, urgent admission for 72 hours and emergency holding of no more than 24 hours.

A major portion of draft act deals with two main themes. The first involves how the court can determine if anyone is suffering from mental health issues while the second deals with the protection of the right of property if anyone is diagnosed with mental health.

It states that any patient, not being a “prisoner with mental disorder”, who feels that he has recovered from his mental health concerns, may write an application to the magistrate within the local limits of whose jurisdiction the psychiatric facility is located to discharge him from the facility.

Whenever any person possessing property and is believed to be a patient, the court, within whose jurisdiction such person is residing may, upon application by any of his or her relatives having obtained consent in writing of the advocate general of the province, direct an enquiry to ascertain whether a person is mentally unstable and incapable of managing himself, his property and his affairs. In light of enquiry, the court will determine the outcome.

The act has made it mandatory to protect the identity and case histories of people with such problems. It also outlines the legal repercussions for anyone who falsely accuses or tortures anyone under the act. While other provinces, particularly Punjab, has enacted the law, K-P still lags behind.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th, 2016.