Human Rights of mentally ill persons can be discussed under the following heads:

1. Right to Health and the Constitution of India

As Citizens of India, they are entitled to all those human and fundamental rights which are guaranteed to each and every citizen by the Constitution of India, to the extent their disability do not prevent them from enjoying those rights or their enjoyment is expressly or impliedly barred by the Constitution or by any other statutory law. The fundamental right to life and liberty as interpreted by the Supreme Court of India in number of landmark cases includes the right to live with human dignity and the right to health.

2. (i) Right to Health as a Basic Human Right and International Covenant:

The United Nations has defined human rights to mean generally as “those rights, which are inherent in our nature and without which we can not live as human beings. Section 2(d) of the protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 has defined the human rights to mean the rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual guaranteed under the Constitution or embodied in the international covenants and enforceable by the courts in India. In 1948, the United Nations through its Declaration of Human Rights affirmed the basic principle that a mentally ill person should at all times be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the person. Every person with a mental illness should have the right to exercise all civil, political, social and cultural rights. The Declaration of the Rights of the disable, which includes person with mental illness was adopted by the United Nations in 1975.

(ii) The 1971 Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons:

This Declaration was adopted by the General Assembly on 20th December 1971, keeping in view the necessity of providing help to mentally retarded persons in order to enable them to develop their abilities and promoting their integration in the normal life. The