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Every courtroom I have entered carries a certain kind of silence. Not the respectful silence that demands attention, but the heavy, uncomfortable kind that hangs in the air when pain is mentioned but not really heard. It is the same silence that surrounds mental illness in our legal system — a silence dressed as procedure, disguised as “neutrality.”

We often speak of justice as being blind. But when it comes to mental health, blindness turns into neglect. The law has words for almost everything: crime, consent, property, and punishment. But it falters when the human mind breaks — when the harm comes not from malice, but from the quiet chaos of one’s own thoughts.

India’s Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, was meant to change that. It promised dignity, autonomy, and access to treatment. It recognised the right to live with mental illness without fear of criminalisation. It even declared suicide as a health issue rather than a crime, by decriminalizing attempts under Section 115. On paper, it was revolutionary. In reality, it remains aspirational — a document that looks beautiful in PDF but feels distant in practice.

The Act mandates every state to establish mental health authorities, to register professionals, and to ensure affordable, accessible treatment. But anyone who has sought care knows how patchy that access truly is. District hospitals rarely have psychiatrists. In rural areas, mental illness is still read as a moral or spiritual failure. The law exists, but the infrastructure does not.

When I was first introduced to the Act in law school, it sounded like a triumph — a rare moment when the state acknowledged something deeply personal. But the more I learned, the more I noticed what was missing: empathy. The law spoke of institutions, of procedures, of oversight. What it didn’t speak of was the everyday negotiation of living with a mind that won’t stay still. It didn’t talk of families that abandon, friends who grow distant, or the shame that follows when one’s illness becomes visible.

The silence of the law mirrors the silence of society. In courtrooms, the mentally ill are often portrayed as unpredictable, dangerous, or incapable of reason. Under the Indian Penal Code, concepts like “unsoundness of mind” are archaic — rooted in Victorian psychiatry. Section 84 of the IPC still uses the M’Naghten rule, from 1843, to define criminal responsibility. It measures sanity as if the human mind were a binary switch: either you know what you’re doing, or you don’t. There’s no space for the grey areas — for moments when you know what you’re doing but cannot stop yourself, or when delusion and clarity coexist in the same breath.

I remember reading case law where judges debated whether schizophrenia “truly” impaired a person’s understanding of right and wrong. As if reason could be neatly separated from emotion. As if trauma could be cross-examined.

In theory, the law recognises that mental illness can affect intent. In practice, it demands that illness be proven through medical evidence — a near impossibility in India’s overburdened system. Legal aid lawyers rarely have the training to identify clients with psychiatric conditions. Prisons, overcrowded and understaffed, double as psychiatric wards by default. Studies suggest that nearly 10-15% of India’s prison population suffers from mental disorders, yet access to therapy or medication is negligible.

What does “justice” mean when someone’s crime is an extension of their illness? The law, obsessed with punishment, has no language for recovery. Rehabilitation remains an afterthought. Even the Mental Healthcare Act, for all its progressiveness, struggles to intersect meaningfully with criminal law. The two remain parallel lines — never meeting, never speaking.

But perhaps the silence isn’t entirely the law’s fault. It is also ours. We rarely see mental illness as a political issue. We reduce it to hashtags, to wellness slogans, to aesthetic vulnerability. When was the last time you saw a politician talk about psychiatric infrastructure in their manifesto? Or a news debate about therapy access in prisons? The stigma is so normalised that invisibility feels safer than being acknowledged.

And yet, in small ways, change is coming. Courts have begun to recognise that the right to mental health is integral to the right to life under Article 21. In X v. Union of India (2022), the Delhi High Court emphasised the state’s duty to ensure accessible psychiatric care. The Supreme Court has spoken about the importance of empathy in cases involving suicide. NIMHANS, AIIMS, and other institutions continue to push for community-based models of care. But law alone cannot heal; it can only make space for healing to happen.

Behind every statistic lies a story. A young woman was denied admission to college because her medical certificate disclosed bipolar disorder. A man was acquitted of murder but confined indefinitely in a mental health facility because his “recovery” was uncertain. A prisoner who stops speaking after months in solitary confinement. These are not exceptions; they are the rule. The legal system, designed to uphold fairness, often becomes a labyrinth where those most in need of compassion are left unheard.

I once attended a legal aid camp inside a district hospital. A woman approached me — thin, trembling, eyes sunken. She had been admitted after a suicide attempt. Her husband had filed for divorce on grounds of “mental cruelty.” She asked me if the law could make him stay. I didn’t know what to say. The law could give her rights, but not belonging. It could protect her, but not heal her. I realised, then, that justice and care were not the same thing — and that sometimes, law cannot bridge that gap.

The silence in our legal system around mental illness is not neutral; it is violent. It tells those struggling that their pain is administrative, not human. It is time to change that. The first step is to reimagine justice itself — not as a matter of punishment and deterrence, but as restoration and care. Legal education must include mental health literacy. Judges and police officers must be trained in trauma sensitivity. Prisons must be reformed into rehabilitative spaces. And above all, the state must see mental health not as an expense, but as a constitutional promise.

We often forget that the law, like people, has a conscience. It learns, it evolves, it falters. The Mental Healthcare Act was a beginning — not an end. The real test lies in whether we can make the law feel as human as the people it seeks to protect.

Because justice, if it is to mean anything at all, must not just see the mind — it must listen to it.

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