THIS refers to the controversy about carrying out execution through death penalty of two mentally-ill patients or rather who are suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder whose symptoms may partially be controlled with medication. However, paranoid is the most difficult to control. For the mentally ill, we never use the term ‘cure’ but remission.

There is some appreciation, in general, and the medical and legal communities, in particular, of this after the Mental Health Ordinance (MHO 2001), though it was not implementable.

In Sindh, we had the ‘Sindh Mental Health Act’ (SMHA) promulgated in 2013 and an amendment referring to blasphemy was also passed by the Sindh Assembly in 2015.

Dr Ghulam Haider, in a letter to Dawn observed that SMHA 2013 was a mere ‘reflection of MHO 2001’. This may be partly true, but most of the clauses which were not implementable in our condition were replaced. The rules and regulations and ‘proformas’ have been gazette-notified and hopefully within a few weeks the Sindh Mental Health Authority and the Board of Visitors would be gazette-notified.

Only a few of the medical practitioners, including psychiatrists, and the legal community are aware of this historic change in 100 years, i.e. Lunacy Act 1912, to SMHA,2013. The Pakistan Association for Mental Health is planning to organise the sensitisation session for the medical and legal community.

We hope that the judiciary would be able to collect enough information and consider the recommendations of the medical board.

Prof. S. Haroon Ahmed

Pakistan Association for Mental Health

Karachi

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2017