The beginning of a new era in mental health. A paradigm change: The Argentine Case

• Main Author: Iris Edith La Salvia
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador 2021-01-01
• Series: Revista Facultad de Jurisprudencia
• Subjects: mental health; capacity; human rights; safety; mental illness.
• Online Access: http://www.revistarfjpuce.edu.ec/index.php/rfj/article/view/226

This paper aims to go through the radical transformation produced in Argentine Republic’s legal and health system in the approach to mental illness, based on the paradigm changes that slowly but effectively it was installed from the Mental Health Law 26,657. The drastic replacement of a system with paternalistic criteria for that of the dignity of risk, the recognition of the person autonomy with mental illness in the exercise of their rights with due assistance, interdisciplinary treatment, the interaction between the institutions of the system health and the restrictive nature of hospitalization measures as a final ratio in cases of severe and imminent risk. The objective is to share this route in order to reflect on how society considers mental illness and the need to complete the evolution of the new paradigm in pursuit of the integration of all people through knowledge as the only useful tool to dethrone the preconceptions and ignorance that traditionally postponed the subject.