This book is part of a series aiming to foster comprehensive research focused on global endeavours of the United Nations to address society's greatest challenges. This book certainly fits the bill in considering how the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) can affect mental health legislation globally.

The book is inspired by real-life stories of people with lived experiences of mental illness. The core chapter considers issues arising in the application of the CRPD in practice. It presents a series of 14 case histories from low-, middle- and high-income countries with commentaries from a global panel of 31 mental health professionals and people with lived experiences (I liked that photographs of most of the contributors were included with their biographies, making it more personable). There are a wide variety of scenarios reviewed, including prison and forensic patients, dementia, gender identity, acute psychosis, the interface with physical health, DSH/suicidality and even someone on death row. Each case has specific questions to address for CRPD applications to be mental health compliant. The case about a 20-year-old man with an acute psychosis presenting to the emergency department who was then moved to an acute ward will resonate with many healthcare professionals. The scenario involved a man in an attempted stabbing driven by his psychosis, IM rapid tranquilisation and physical restraint needed for agitation/aggression, and ultimately seclusion on a ward. Different global perspectives were used to discuss potential non-pharmacological and pharmacological approaches at different points of the scenario. The thrust of this case was the need for containment and treatment of mental illness during an acute exacerbation requiring an emergency response and the need for involuntary admission to hospital. For each case comments are made by several contributors and helpful concluding editorial remarks bringing CRPD and human rights themes to the fore. This provides an interesting insight into the commonality of human rights approaches globally for such scenarios. In the above case the concluding commentary discussed key competing CRPD articles at play and how it was difficult to apply the CRPD where it could be interpreted as prohibiting all involuntary treatment owing to potential article violations. The concluding comments observed that all the commentators – patient representative included – rejected ‘such absolutist interpretation and argued for promotion of the right to health’ for the individual. The longest chapter considers the impact of the CRPD and human rights on mental health legislation in eight different countries, regions and cultures. Closer to home, the section on Scotland elucidated challenges to overcome in implementing the CRPD and how it particularly challenges the fundamentals of mental health legislation – such legislation tending to focus on the authoritarian regulation of non-consensual psychiatric detention and treatment based on diagnosis and little else. It also noted how legislation often fails to consider the wider needs of persons with mental disabilities, and therein lies the major crux in CRPD implementation.

The book is very well laid out and avoids long-winded tracts of text. It keeps the core aim to the fore throughout in elucidating the challenges of implementing the CRPD. Human rights can be a very nebulous concept. The use of cases, though, helps the reader to understand these more clearly as well as showing how the CRPD can be implemented in the real world and as a catalyst for change – thus addressing the key challenge to overcome in the embedding of CRPD rights in mental health legislation. The book is excellent for those interested in human rights and mental healthcare as it uses real-life scenarios common in clinical practice. The embedding of the CRPD and human rights into mental health legislation remains a mammoth and complex task (even in the UK), but this book provides a small but definite step in understanding how to do this by learning from the global community.