Universalist Visions to Wellness – Human Rights Applied to Mental Health
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Low Entropy (Unpublished)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2020
Mental health sits at the foundation of general human wellbeing. Human rights stand as a universalist vision of the international community of nations and citizens. If we want an equitable world, we need health global citizens with equal opportunity and stature.
Human rights and mental health are a united front for the equal treatment of all. Human rights mean every human being is provided the same privileges and responsibilities. Mental health is something for everyone to strive to attain and maintain for a better life.
On December 10, 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights created the foundation for an international human rights and rules based global order. Everyone, in theory, acquires the same rights, becomes subject to the same laws, and operates within the same boundaries.
Low Entropy Foundation defines as follows, “Low Entropy is a registered charity that is making personal development accessible to all, and in doing so, providing people with tools to change themselves and the world.”
Personal development deals with individual people who each have a mental status: healthy or unhealthy. For proper functioning in a society, in relationship, in professional life, in individual self-management and self-care, mental health reigns supreme.
In a sense, without mental health, we can’t have professional life health, relationship health, or societal health. It’s bottom up. It starts with an apparent irreducible component of the field of psychology, individual human personalities.
Therefore, ill societies are comprised of ill individuals; healthy societies are composed of healthy individuals. To make incremental change or piecemeal reform to the health status of societies, we should focus on individuals, individual needs, and personal development as these over time.
A fundamental basis of the international rights and rules based order is the idea of the rights as principles. In general, these principles, human rights as such, mean broad ethical principles with legal and social import for freedoms and entitlements.
The tacit implication behind human rights freedoms and entitlements is the consequent need for obligations and duties. If you want a right, then you purchase a responsibility as a consequence of it. It’s a two-part deal. By having rights from others, you have obligations to them.
Individual human rights follow from the ideas of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In that, the rights inhere, tie to, individual human beings. You have rights and obligations. I have rights and obligations. Same with our neighbours. We have right to exercise them, too.
One obscure idea in the United Nations is the idea of autonymity. I do not see the term used much, but I see the concept used all the time. It’s foundational to rights. If you have ethical principles, what is the point without the ability to exercise them?
Take, for example, the right to freedom of expression; it’s a fundamental human right. By writing this article in this forum with this particular formulation of ideas, I am exercising the right to freedom of expression.
Even with rare formalization with the explicit use of the term, it’s a hugely consequential idea. The concept of guarding, keeping, the right to exercise all other rights. The idea, typically, is applied to use of names, as in autonymity to names.
It means “inalienable personal rights which may be exercised in any situation.” In the domain of mental health and the cross-sect of individual fundamental human rights, the question arises, “What is the relevance of human rights and mental health?” It’s a good question.
With some more thought, it is a profound question with deep, lasting consequences for our lives and, as argued above, societies’ health. One would need to connect human rights to mental health in a direct way.
Where, a basic international human rights argument is made for the right to mental health. Following this, the “inalienable personal rights which may be exercised in any situation” become relevant to psychological wellness.
In fact, this has been argued, directly, by The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, Ontario Human Rights Commission, the World Health Organization, the American Psychological Association, and others.
It’s a significant number of local, national, regional, and international actors. The emphasis is clear. There is a deep interconnectedness of international, national, and provincial efforts to improve both the status of human rights and the mental health of citizens.
Similarly, direct efforts at improving the conditions of human rights through increased mental health are ongoing, the question, at this point, shouldn’t be, “What is the relation of human rights and mental health?”
Rather, it should be, “What is the best way in which to implement human rights to improve international mental health at an individual level?” Fundamentally, this is the question. It is not a singular solution, too. Because it’s a plural problem.
This hydra will require targeted solutions and community-based interventions to work on specific, individualized issues. There’s anxiety, depression, narcissism, psychopathy/sociopathy (antisocial personality disorder), bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and so on.
Each one has a differentiated formal solution. Every one with multiple ways to combat them in better and worse ways. The Low Entropy Foundation in its work is one such effort at improving the mental health of communities, of youth, and men and women.
Those conscious efforts at working together on personal development in community, in close-knit groups. It’s not everything, but it’s a start.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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