정신장애인의 사회통합과 장애인복지법 제15조 등 법제 개선방향

Abstract

The old Mental Health Act had very insufficient welfare and support programs for people with mental illness at community in Korea. The Welfare Law for Persons with Disabilities stipulated that people with mental illness are the disabled legally but excluded them from the universal welfare delivery system for all of the disabled by article 15. The old Mental Health Act was completely amended to the Mental Health and Welfare Act to solve the problem of poor welfare services for people with mental illness in community. The new Act introduced various provisions concerning the welfare services to support people with mental illness in community. The new Act chose a policy to establish the welfare service delivery system only for people with mental illness apart from the universal welfare delivery system based on the Welfare Law for Persons with Disabilities. Despite the change of the policy, welfare services and their delivery systems for people with mental illness are established not enough to support the recovery and inclusion of people with mental illness in community. To realize new policy objectives, we must get over the following challenges : (1) the reorganization of the Mental Health and welfare Center to provide and link welfare services under the Mental Health and Welfare Act, (2) the abolition of Article 15 of the Welfare Law for Persons with Disabilities, which has excluded people with mental illness from the universal welfare service delivery system for all of the disabled, (3) preparation of mental health social worker in universal welfare service delivery system to be capable of providing welfare services for people with mental illness, (4) revision of the service provision criteria to take into account characteristics of people with mental illness, etc.