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Lack of awareness of legal rights

A number of stakeholders and two participants suggested that people with a mental illness often lack awareness that their problem—for instance, housing, family, debt—has a legal element to it.⁶ Because people do not recognise that they have a legal problem, they may be unaware of their legal rights in a particular situation and may therefore not seek legal assistance.

So there are probably many people out there who don’t know they have a problem.⁷

Quite often with mental health, clients are totally confused about what actually is a legal issue.⁸

Several service providers were of the opinion that because people with a mental illness tend to have lower levels of participation in education and employment, they lack basic knowledge of legal issues and the legal process, and they may also lack the ability to find this information.⁹ This is supported by the Disability Council in A Question of Justice, which found:

People with disabilities reported being disadvantaged as a result of lost educational opportunities which contributed to them not having the necessary knowledge, awareness, and skills to locate information or know what questions to ask.¹⁰

It was also reported that loss of education is a particular issue for young people with a mental illness who, as a result, lack knowledge about legal issues and the legal system.¹¹