Abolishing Forced Psychiatry

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Abolishing Forced Psychiatry means to end all involuntary hospitalization and treatment in the mental health system. Users and survivors of psychiatry, the worldwide disability movement and the United Nations worked from 2002-2006 to develop international law based on disability non-discrimination. The resulting Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities prohibits forced psychiatry, which is a violent form of discrimination.

How does the CRPD require countries to abolish forced psychiatry?

  • States must recognize that persons with disabilities have equal legal capacity as others, in all aspects of life – Article 12.2
  • States must ensure that there is no deprivation of liberty based on disability – Article 14.1.b
  • States must prevent torture or other ill-treatment of persons with disabilities – Article 15.2
  • States must ensure free and informed consent in health care – Article 25.d
  • Detention based on disability is discriminatory and therefore arbitrary under international law
  • The international law definition of torture includes the infliction of severe mental or physical pain or suffering for discriminatory reasons

Tina Minkowitz (then co-chair of WNUSP) explains key articles in this video, recorded in June 2005.

by Ailsa Rayner