MHM Magazine

22 | MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS | Issue 2 | 2022 MHM One in three South Africans will experience mental illness in their lifetime. Although evidence- based interventions have been developed, close to 91% of people with mental illness in South Africa don’t receive treatment. Poor access to quality mental health care may be related to reduced attention on mental health care, ignorance, stigma, shortages of psychiatric medicines, scarcity of practitioners and facilities. This creates a real potential, if not reality of multiple violations of people with mental disabilities, psychiatric patients’ human rights. In Human Rights Month 2022, with the deaths and human rights abuses of public sector mental health patients in the Life Esidimeni tragedy five years BETTER PROTECTION OF MENTAL HEALTH PATIENTS’ HUMAN RIGHTS NEEDED By Linda Christensen South African Society of Psychiatrists (SASOP)