Legal status of the mentally disabled person in South African law.

Mental illness or insanity has a dramatic influence on a person's legal status. A person's status determines his or her competencies such as legal capacity, capacity to act, accountability and capacity to litigate. A mentally ill person is incapable of performing juristic acts; he or she is not capable of becoming a party to legal proceedings; is virtually incapable of committing a crime or being liable for a delict; etc. However, not all mentally ill persons are precluded from performing legal acts or, for that matter, giving valid consent to medical treatment. The reason being that status is factually determined according to the degree to which the mental illness is present at the time when the mentally ill person participates in the legal traffic. The measure of capability depends on the patient's intellectual and volitional capacities that will decide whether the patient can validly contract, litigate or consent to medical treatment. More specifically medical research of a non-therapeutic nature can only be carried out on mental patients who are capable of consenting thereto. This article endeavours to touch upon the different aspects of the mentally ill person's legal status.