Mental health policy and practice across Europe: an overview

Tackling social exclusion 47
than one such body, to deal with distinct issues such as race, gender and
disability (www.eumc.eu.int).
It appears that EU and peer pressure is speeding up progress in legislating
against discrimination (even beyond EU countries). For instance, the Norwegian
Parliament set up a Commission, gathered evidence from Europe and beyond,
and adopted anti-discrimination provisions in the labour market (under Paragraph
55 of its 2001 legislation on the work environment, which amended
Acts No 313 and 311 in the Collection of Laws – Labour Code). This followed
lobbying based on the European Directive on Employment and the influence
of pre-existing Swedish legislation. Slovakia adopted a new employment act
which came into force in 2004 and which provided measures to encourage the
active involvement of disabled persons in the workplace (under Act No. 5 on
Employment Services).
European countries have the potential to avoid the pitfalls in British law
when developing their legislation. Furthermore, in the USA and Britain there is
extensive material on what ‘reasonable adjustments’ can mean in the workplace
for people with mental health problems, from off-line support to additional
supervision or flexible hours (Employers Forum on Disability 1998). In Germany
and Russia, there are strong incentives for employers to recruit and retain disabled
people – and fines for non-compliance that are ploughed back into
implementation programmes.
Systemic legal powers are likely to have an even greater impact than individual
redress. In Britain the DRC can conduct formal investigations into whole
sectors or organizations that appear to be discriminating – and make recommendations
for systemic change, backed by the force of law. The government
has also legislated to introduce a public sector duty, requiring that public sector
organizations proactively promote equality of opportunity – rather than tackling
discrimination only after the event. This came into force in December
2006 under the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. It will be crucial to evaluate
the impact of the range of legal and policy measures and spread good practice
across Europe.
Intervening in the different stages of discrimination
Link and Phelan (2001) argue that stigma has four components:
• distinguishing between and labelling human differences;
• linking the labelled persons to undesirable characteristics;
• separating ‘them’ (the labelled persons) from ‘us’; culminating in
• status loss and discrimination that lead to unequal outcomes or life chances.
Sayce (2003) analyses evidence for potential interventions in each of these
stages to achieve reduced discrimination. Here, two particularly salient lessons
from evidence are further developed.