The Advisory Committee for Mental Health and the Law will examine how society considers the rights of people with a mental illness.

The way in which the legal system in particular impacts the human rights of those with mental health problems will be central to the work of this committee.

The Mental Health and the Law committee is focused on projects to:

Help develop tools to assess how mental health and the law currently impacts the human rights of people with mental health problems - the Human Rights Evaluation Project.

Examine best practices in police services regarding interactions with people who have a mental illness -
the Police Project. 

Determine whether changes to the current criminal justice system could help reduce the number of mentally ill people within it; and whether changes to the system could provide mentally ill people with improved access to hospital care before their actions lead them to enter the criminal justice system;

Examine the evolution of procedures and best practices in mental health care for correctional facilities.