New Delhi: In what could be a huge blow to the disability movement, the Narendra Modi government is planning to keep out “mental illness” from the ambit of the long-delayed law planned on disabilities.
Reliable sources said that under the proposed Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill 2014, now being considered by a group of ministers under the chairmanship of home minister Rajnath Singh, the ministers have recommended that mental illness should be left to the health ministry as “mental illness is a disease, and not a disability”.
“The present government is of the view that mental illness is not a disability and is a health issue, and therefore it should be out of the ambit of the proposed law and the health ministry should be dealing with it,” a source said.
However, across the world mental illness is considered as a disability, in fact the accepted term to describe the set of ailments is “psycho-social disabilities”.
