• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.209-279
• /
• 2016

The Korean Mental Health Act was amended 2016 overall. This paper examines and evaluates the old Korean Mental Health Act since 1995 and the new Korean Mental Health Promotion Act 2016 from the Perspective of Human Rights and Inclusion of Persons with Psychosocial Disabilities. The persons with mental disabilities was separated and ruled out from society by the enactment of the Mental Health Act in 1995 and five times amendment. That has been justified and institutionally supported by medical viewpoint. The medical approach which reconsider the persons with mental disabilities as patients conceal that the aims of the involuntary admission in Mental Hospital are protection of society and the relief of the family member's duty of support for person with mental disabilities. This is institutionally supported in the 1995 Korean Mental Health Act by involuntary admission through the consent of family members as protectors. According to the old Act, the family members as protectors are authorized to consent to involuntary admission of persons with mental disabilities. Also, the psychiatrist that diagnoses the person with mental disabilities and evaluates the need for treatment by admission is not impartial in this decision. Family members as protectors may want to lighten their burden of support for the person with mental disabilities in their home by admitting them into a mental hospital, and the psychiatrist in the mental hospital can be improperly influenced by demand of hospital management. Additionally, Article 24 of the Korean Mental Health Act for the Involuntary Admission by the Consent of Family Members as Protector might violate personal liberty, as guaranteed in the Korean Constitution. The Mental Health Promotion Law was amended to reduce the scope of the persons with mental illness which are subject to forced hospitalization and to demand that a second diagnosis is made by another psychiatrist and screening by the committee concerning the legitimacy of admission in the process of the involuntary admission by the consent of family members as a method of protection. The amended Mental Health Promotion Law will contribute to reducing the number of the involuntary admissions and the inclusion of persons with mental disabilities. But if persons with mental disabilities are not providing some kind of service to the community, the amended Mental Health Promotion Law does not work for Inclusion of them.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
• /
• v.14 no.8
• /
• pp.203-211
• /
• 2020

This study is a similar experimental study using parallax design before and after the non-equality control group conducted to investigate the effects of the Mental health guardian program for mentally disabled people on the awareness of rights, empowerment, and resilience of mentally disabled people. The mentally handicapped persons who participated in the mental health guardian program were significantly higher in the awareness of the rights of the handicapped compared to the mentally handicapped persons who did not participate. In terms of empowerment, there was no significant difference between the two groups. In terms of resilience, the experimental group significantly increased compared to the control group. Among the sub-areas of resilience, excluding spirituality, difficulty overcoming, self-competence, learning and self-financing, basic functions, overall life satisfaction, new potential, advocacy and fullness all significantly increased. It has been shown to be effective in increasing the resilience of the disabled. In this study, the reason why mental health guardian program is effective for awareness of rights and resilience is not a one-way education, but a participatory curriculum in which a person with mental disabilities who participated in the education finds and corrects the wrong news and creates a card news again. It seems to be because it did. As a result of this study, it seems that the mental health guardian program has contributed to enhancing the recognition of the rights of the mentally impaired and enhancing resilience.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
• /
• v.47 no.4
• /
• pp.361-388
• /
• 2016

The purpose of the study was to conduct an empirical study on the scope and level of social exclusion experienced by persons with psychosocial disabilities. The Wave 6 data of the Panel Survey of Employment for the Disabled were used to investigate the current status of social exclusion in life areas including income, education, work, housing, health, social network, social participation, and discrimination (N=4,161). A series of logistic regressions were executed, with the psychosocial disability(PD) group being the reference; the reverse odds rations of different disability groups were compared against the PD reference group (OR=1). The results showed that compared with all others, the PD group was about 2 to 11 times more likely to have risks in income, work, and housing; and that compared to other groups except for the autism/developmental disability group, they were about 6 to 10 times more likely to have risks in social network, social participation and discrimination. In conclusion, the authors urged the need for legal mandates to have community based mental health services and welfare services for the disabled more available to the PD groups and the necessity to eliminate various discriminatory legislations that are violating human and social rights of the persons with PDs.