A rights-based critique of the Turkish mental healthcare reform: deinstitutionalisation without independent living?

This article offers a critical examination of the 2006 Turkish mental healthcare reform aimed at deinstitutionalisation and introduction of a community-based approach. Combined with Turkey’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the rhetoric of the reform signified a step towards a rights-based approach. Despite some evidence of progress towards deinstitutionalisation, this article suggests that the reform has largely failed in its goal of implementing a rights-based approach, for three reasons: its inability to address unmet needs for mental healthcare, its failure to complement community-based mental healthcare provision with social policy programmes, and its deficiency in legislating civil rights protections. These failures have engendered an ineffective trend towards deinstitutionalisation rather than facilitating the transition to independent living. Finally, this article calls for a nuanced understanding of deinstitutionalisation, with consideration of the broader social policy and civil rights environment within which the mental healthcare system is embedded.