On March 25, the World Health Organization published a 44-page document, Guidance on Mental Health Policy and Strategic Action Plans, that reflects the ongoing work of global activists who have fought for a paradigm shift in mental health. The publication was WHO’s first comprehensive mental health guidance it has issued in 20 years, and it puts human rights at the center of its call for fundamental changes in global mental health policies.

Within the last 20 years, the advocacy of disabled people and psychiatric survivors led to the adoption of the historic Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) at the United Nations. The guidance also acknowledges that the last decade and a half has seen emerging perspectives that reflect a “shift from a primarily biomedical focus toward approaches that are more person-centered, recovery-oriented, and grounded in human rights.”

WHO launched its new guidance on March 25, with the online event featuring WHO officials, ministers of global health, persons with lived experience, and other experts, many of whom acknowledged the gap between the vision reflected in the new guidance and the on-the-ground realities in many parts of the world.

“Mental health systems are outdated, underfunded, and misaligned with evidence-based practices and human rights standards,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his opening remarks. “As a result, many people suffer due to inadequate care, exclusion, and lack of access to the support they need.”

The guidance highlights the discrepancy between many countries’ stated commitments to achieving human rights-based mental health systems, and their widespread failure to implement needed reforms and reallocation of resources. Michelle Funk, head of WHO’s Policy, Law and Human Rights Unit for Mental Health and Substance Use and co-author of the guidance, told the online audience of over 2,000: “Today we stand at a pivotal moment in our journey to transform mental health systems globally. This is not just another event. It’s a call to action.”

A Holistic Approach to Mental Health Reform, Grounded in Social Justice

The WHO guidance is organized into five policy areas in need of urgent change: leadership and governance, service organization, workforce development, person-centered interventions, and addressing the social and structural determinants of mental health. The guidance encompasses a menu of policy directives across these areas that can be tailored to specific contexts, as well as country case scenarios and a comprehensive directory of policies and strategies.

One of the overarching themes in the guidance is “safe, planned deinstitutionalization.” “Rather than simply closing institutions, the guidance provides a roadmap for transitioning to strong community care systems,” Funk said.

The WHO guidance notes that merely shifting to a community-based system of care is insufficient. “Smaller community services can also replicate these violations, acting as mini-institutions,” the document states. The guidance emphasizes that systems and services should focus on “comprehensively eliminating institutional mindsets and practices.”

Another focus is supporting countries to eliminate coercion and abuse through systemic reforms, as well as upholding individuals’ legal capacity and decision-making rights. “This isn’t just aspirational,” Funk emphasized. “The guidance proposes concrete steps to eliminate coercive practices, involuntary treatment, and promote more generally rights-based approaches.”

Strategies include the use of financial incentives such as insurance reimbursements to implement care that avoids coercion.

Funk also underscored the guidance’s emphasis on the meaningful inclusion of people with lived experience in decision-making and policy making, ensuring that “reforms are grounded in real-world needs.”

The guidance outlines recommendations for increasing the representation and participation of directly impacted people, such as drafting collaborative standards, creating financial incentives such as equal compensation for lived experience, developing opportunities for professional development, and establishing leadership positions in training and research.

Further, the new guidance advocates for shifting away from “historic overreliance on the biomedical approach and psychotropic drugs.” Ahmed Hankir, a psychiatrist and expert by lived experience who co-facilitated the discussion, noted that the WHO guidance is not “against” the prescribing of psychiatric drugs per se. “What we are against is the prescribing of powerful psychiatric drugs when it isn’t necessary, and for longer than necessary, and in higher doses than necessary,” he said, reflecting on his own “terrible experience” with metabolic syndrome.

“Our threshold for prescribing psychiatric drugs shouldn’t be so low,” he said. “There’s so much that we can do before we get that prescription pad out.”

The guidance also emphasizes cross-sector collaboration to advance the social determinants of health: “By addressing broader social and structural determinants — such as poverty, housing insecurity, unemployment, and discrimination — and emphasizing multi-sectoral collaboration, the guidance promotes a holistic approach to mental health reform, advancing equity and social justice.”

Each section includes considerations for diverse groups including “children and adolescents, older adults, women, men and gender-diverse persons, the LGBTQI+ community, disabled people, migrants and refugees, persons from minoritized, racial and ethnic groups, Indigenous Peoples, and persons who are houseless or with unstable housing,” noting that “due to unique characteristics, life circumstances, or unmet needs, these groups may require specific support and attention beyond that of the general population.”

Ambitious Goals Meet Grim Global Realities

Jarrod Clyne, deputy executive director of the International Disability Alliance, and who identifies as a person with lived experience, began his remarks at the WHO launch by describing his three months of involuntary confinement in a locked unit 25 years ago: ”I was both physically and chemically restrained … What happened to me was, and remains, common practice. That experience made one thing clear to me: Coercive practices in mental health do not just fail to support recovery. They cause lasting harm.”

Clyne spoke of being “moved to tears” when reading the WHO guidance. “It reflects 20 years of evolution of human rights and policy standards, evidence, and understanding of human diversity,” Clyne said, calling it “the beginning of moral repair, transformed services, and a better future.”

In his remarks, Clyne also highlighted the work of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (WNUSP), underscoring the importance that the WHO guidance places on the meaningful involvement of people with psychosocial disabilities: “Doing so helps us avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.”

In the policy guidance, WHO reiterated its ambitious global target, aiming for 80% of countries to achieve alignment with international human rights standards by 2030.

However, the United States will almost certainly not be among that group of countries. In January, President Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the US from WHO and eliminating US funding for the organization. As the US had been WHO’s largest funder, this withdrawal is likely to cause “enormous strain on the global community” and “significant health consequences for the US,” according to public health experts.

Human rights violations regarding mental health practices in the US have spanned multiple administrations going back decades, but the current administration’s policies bode especially poorly for the change envisioned by WHO. Between Trump’s expressed commitment to send unhoused people to “mental institutions where they belong,” to the shuttering of the Administration for Community Living, to the HHS cuts that have ended vital peer-run programs and services, the era of re-institutionalization is under way.

In the United States, “we are particularly facing a rise in coercive practices with people diagnosed with psychosis, especially those who are homeless,” wrote Leah Giorgini, executive director of the International Society for Psychosocial and Social Approaches to Psychosis, US chapter, in the WHO chat. “More and more policies target these individuals and laws are being put into place to force people into involuntary treatment. The social fabric of America’s lack of welfare and support is not addressed. We at ISPS-US uphold this guidance’s demand for rights-based treatment and a focus on social determinants and supports.”

Responses to the WHO Guidance

The launch event concluded with an interactive discussion prompted by questions and issues raised in the chat, which overflowed with people from around the world sharing about their research, their programs, their concerns, and their priorities for the future of global mental health.

One of the first topics of discussion facilitated by Hankir examined the role of psychiatry in human rights abuses. “There needs to be more accountability. And we need to apologize unreservedly,” he said, referencing the 2021 American Psychiatric Association’s apology for its role in supporting structural racism in psychiatric services.

Some attendees also expressed discomfort with guidance’s inclusion of the concept of “stigma” and promotion of anti-stigma campaigns, which have long been criticized for increasing what they set out to reduce, and are not well-supported by evidence. Hankir concurred with attendees, adding: “I would even say that ‘discrimination’ is a euphemism. I think people are being brutalized and dehumanized.”

Many participants, including Archie Lawrence Geneta, psychologist and faculty member with the Department of Behavioral Sciences at the University of the Philippines in Manila, expressed appreciation in the chat for WHO’s move away from the biomedical model to focus on social determinants and social justice. “In the Philippines, where poverty, discrimination, and all forms of abuse are all still prevalent, it is long overdue to have a more dedicated policy and action plan to address mental health fallouts and the intersectionalities associated with these,” Geneta wrote.

Other participants advocated for the WHO to center culturally-grounded and decolonized approaches to mental health, as well as the meaningful inclusion of long-marginalized service-user perspectives. “We need to consider culture…and its connection to mental health,” wrote mental health and child protection specialist Sara Amhaz. “A big component of decolonizing mental health and psychosocial supports is related to considering local, cultural, and traditional mental health and psychosocial support considerations…” noting an ongoing perception that these services are “still using Westernized approaches.”

Olivia Shaw-Lovell, a gender equality advocate and global health consultant who leads Men and Women of Destiny, which is an NGO based in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago that provides holistic support focused on survivors of abuse, told of her research focusing on decolonizing global mental health for Black Caribbean women who are survivors of gender-based violence. “Given this, I hope this policy is deeply informed by the narratives and lived experiences of those who will be accessing these services,” Shaw-Lovell wrote.

Still others noted fundamental human rights in their countries and societies. Jim E. Warne, a member of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) Nation who serves as community engagement and diversity director at University of South Dakota’s Center for Disabilities Oyáte Circle, appealed to WHO and the global community to aid Indigenous Americans. “We have always been underfunded, and the health, disability, and mortality rates remain the worst in the U.S.,” he wrote. “Can WHO help our Indigenous People that are often forgotten or ignored in the U.S.? My reservation has the lowest life expectancy and [highest] youth suicide. We need help from other countries that value Indigenous People.”

Jim Warne on the Souls of Men

One attendee’s question in the chat put into focus the contrast between the vision in the guidance and stark global realities of rising war and inequality: “How can we implement guidance on mental health policy and strategic action plans in countries like Sudan, where basic human rights are lacking?”

A Time for Global Solidarity

Belén González, Spain’s mental health commissioner, spoke plainly to current global realities at the global launch event: “Right now, when it’s becoming harder to defend autonomy, human rights, equality, and equity, and when some forces try to undo what many of us have fought for, having a strong and clear document like this one is more important than ever.”

“In our field, rights must come first,” she added. “Evidence alone cannot protect people from coercion or poor practices. I see this guidance not only as a tool, but as a moral compass. It will help us defend the changes that really matter.”

The hopeful WHO guidance emerges at a time of polycrisis, intersecting global calamities that are unlikely to be solved exclusively at the level of the state. Defending human rights under attack in the US and so many parts of the world will also require grassroots organizing, global solidarity, and mutual aid, according to activists.

Human rights activist Myra Kovary, who participated in the negotiations of the text of the CRPD, wrote: “Greetings from the USA where forced psychiatry is on the rise. After 45 years of activism to stop such human rights abominations, I am heartened by this new and long overdue WHO guidance on mental health policy. Implementation of human rights within the development of any mental health policies will require ongoing vigilance and participation from those of us who have lived experience. Thank you to all who are responsible for this significant step forward, especially for the persons with lived experience who have been bravely speaking out about human rights abominations in so-called mental health ‘treatment’ for decades. ‘Nothing about us without us!’”

And while the guidance recognizes the significant contributions of lived experience to advances in international human rights in mental health, for too long movements of directly-impacted people have been siloed from one another. In his concluding remarks, Michael Njenga, executive council member at the African Disability Forum, and an expert by lived experience from Kenya who significantly contributed to the development of the CRPD, discussed the importance of ongoing cross-movement building: “We keep on talking amongst ourselves … It’s good to think about how to build coalitions with other movements.”

***

MIA Reports are supported by a grant from Open Excellence and by donations from MIA readers. To donate, visit: https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/

32 COMMENTS

  1. Regardless of this WHO policy shift and the growing number of critics of psychiatry, there are many more forces destroying what you call ‘mental health’ today then there are possibilities of any kind of adequate social response to it, so you have to see the futility of all social efforts to tackle the SOCIAL STRUCTURES and SOCIAL AUTHORITIES. Hard as it might seem, what is required is to understand how we can mount an effective response to the social and psychological crises OURSELVES. We will have to be our solution, not a reform of psychiatrists or society. Now that is an enormous task and perhaps our response will turn local or inward, or perhaps we will explode into a different modality of social action entirely, but what will never, ever work is trying to solve the crisis in the hearts and minds of everyone with the authoritarian structures of psychiatry which only ever dealt with the problem by disposing, in one way or another, of the ‘problem person’, by quietening them with drugs and moving them onto welfare where they can be profited from and patronized by professional vampires until their graves. You see? And the same is true also of the crisis we call ‘criminality’ which is a kid without a place in this world behaving according to their own peculiar desperate strategies to survive in this brutal, loveless and judgemental society. Trying to reform psychiatry in the way you do is like trying to campaign to prison officers and judges to change the criminal justice system and try and make it humane. And this is your basic approach to the crisis you call psychiatry and mental health, but is actually part of the total human crisis of society and consciousness which are indivisible. You really must see the this because otherwise all efforts are in vain. No strategy thus far has worked to make an impact on the problem, with all progress coming about through the piecemeal offerings of the few that are prepared to look at the field critically. Even if a critical mass of psychiatrists and policy makers accepted your critique there’d be absolutely no consensus on what could be done instead and if you really look into it the real approach would strip out the role of any kind of ‘professional’ in the sense of expert altogether – and hopefully some of you at least are able to see this. We don’t need to ask where recognizing our redundant strategies will take us, and indeed we can’t, because it will be somewhere new, and we can only have visions based on what we already know hence has always been. And as we can all see there is no risk involved in losing the old, only in being trapped and struggling within it hopelessly.

    Report comment

    • I once had a cat who seemingly thought he was a dog. He was raised with canine siblings. We lived in a place for a while that had an unofficial dog park across the alley. My cat would wander over and try to socialize. But the dogs, confused, would surround him.

      Each of them knew exactly what to do when a cat ran away—chase it. But when the cat just stood there, they froze, looking at each other as if to say, Now what?

      That’s how I feel when I criticize our systems. People agree change is needed, but only so long as the answer involves adjusting the systems we already have. When I suggest abandoning dysfunctional systems altogether, I become the cat that didn’t run—surrounded by confused dogs.

      When organic, community-based solutions are offered as an alternative to the dysfunctional, centralized systems of concentrated power, the whole notion is immediately dismissed. Visions of anarchy and chaos ensue, while the horrors of our systemic follies are accepted as being inevitable and preferable to any real alternative.

      The crowd demands a better answer—one that feels familiar—merely an acceptable tweak to fundamentally flawed systems.

      When an alternative idea is offered, it’s rejected out of hand simply because it’s obviously not the way things are. Then it seems I’m expected to either agree or retreat. And when I do neither, people get uncomfortable.

      Rather than let a new idea disrupt their ossified, system-based groupthink they’ve been indoctrinated into, they dismiss it. And if the one who voiced it doesn’t back down or walk away, they become something else entirely: a fire hydrant to piss on.

      Report comment

  2. Seeking social solutions to social problems is a bit like the almost universal struggle for identity, which is part of the death drive. In the case of social solutions, you can’t bare what is so you seek what you want to see as a reaction rather then really seeing clearly and understanding what you see. Same too with the struggle for social identity. You can’t bare what you are so you SEEK who you are, when you always were what you actually are right now, which is nothing you can seek. ‘I need to find myself’ means I want to die, but understanding this, you can begin to understand who you actually are right now, which is a frightened, confused human being just like everyone else around you except those who have settled into an ossified social identity and are therefore already dead. Perhaps there are free people walking this Earth but they are free people because they never relied on others to save them, and no one can save you my friend. You have to save yourself by SEEING THINGS AS THEY ARE, or else you have no choice but to collapse into your ash heap of delusions within you hide from yourself and life as the wolves of knowing come pounding at the door. In the case of the critic of psychiatry, the drive for social reform is also at risk of entrapping you into a fixed sense of identity and purpose around this cause, and if so the two problems in you are actually one. But you don’t need to abandon your cause – just widen it totally to include the whole of society, humanity, yourself, the whole of Earth and the whole of truth. Then how can you say you have lost anything at all? You have only lost prisons and mouse holes.

    Report comment

  3. Government, policing and all forms of social authority are for a humanity infantilized, made immature, stupid, conditioned and powerless by this society of government, policing and social authority, including intellectual authority. Any regard for intellectual authority is proof of your enslavement by social group-think. If you ask who am I to say this it is again proof that your brain is enslaved by social group-think, because who I am is not the point: the point is the truth, but if you say ‘who am I to speak the truth’ you are asking what kind of authority, master, leader of your mind can I possibly be. Thus you are immature, because an honest human being is the truth. You just don’t know how to be a honest human being, which is speaking freely. If you could speak with radical honesty and freedom you would be the truth in words, because YOU ARE THE TRUTH, not some authority outside your head telling you what you are, which is society. It has made you blind and immature. Every adult wildcat has more dignity, maturity, and sanity then you do. You ARE domesticated animals. Natural animals know how to be healthy and clear and are not factory farm made like me and you.

    Report comment

  5. The need for a safe and effective way, a humane way, to relieve suffering is as old as the human race. Two thousand five hundred years ago a way was found by a man in India who realised the cause of human suffering. Unbeknown to Westerners it spread all over South East Asia and deeply influenced the cultures it then grew in and has helped millions of people find relief from suffering – what modern psychiatry would label as fear, anger, anxiety, depression, psychosis, etc. It does not depend on any theory or dogma or belief or drugs or talking therapy.
    Westerners have only known of it for about the last 150 years and it is still not well known because its cultural roots do not exist in Western culture. In the West it is known as Buddhism.
    It is a real paradigm shift that has existed for centuries, and we would do well not to ignore it.
    See Adaptation Practice for an introduction – https://www.adaptationpractice.org/.

    Report comment

  6. Funnily enough, every commentor in one way or another is agreeing. When Mr Sherlock advocates Buddhism I believe he is advocating meditation, the observation of one’s own movements of mind, life and feeling, which is what the Buddha did but I wouldn’t call this Buddhism – I’d call it meditation, and much Buddhism has drifted from the core insight into intellectualization. However, they recognize much better that mental wellbeing is an inside job, as does much of Asia more generally, not to mention the Native American cultures whose emphasis on keeping balance is to be mindful, to be aware. Those who talk of self-healing and spiritual awakening and using plant medicines are also shifting to solutions based on a direct confrontation with the psychological phenomena and meditation is just the same. And if we really all become conscious of this modality of health (which must go along with natural freedom otherwise it is duality, repression, trying to get somewhere rather then seeing what is) then perhaps we will all collectively grasp the true direction we ought to be taking our critique of psychiatry by identifying the positive solution which isn’t just for those we label mentally ill but is the true modality of health and liberation from social conditioning that each of us must undergo if we are ever to reclaim our sovereignty as a human being, our health and our sanity, for the socially conditioned human being is not clear, sane, factual. They live in social and intellectual fantasies which blights the clarity and intelligence of pretty much everyone on Earth today.

    Report comment

  7. A report like the WHO has published:
    Attempting to maintain the status quo in a way.
    In my experience, both the allopathic Psychiatry System AND the WHO do not have their “fingers on the pulse” of the ACTUAL foundations of optimal health.

    A report like this attempts to legitimize both organizations (WHO & Psychiatry).

    Optimal Health is holistic.
    [I know I am preaching to the choir here yet feel to chime in]
    Enabling basic human needs to be met is foundational. Requires community and natural human to human connection.

    What if the whole issue is addressed with ensuring adequate resources, housing & nutrition for the body/brain?
    Trauma, social programming/entrainment to suboptimal mindsets & beliefs require awareness & support ALSO.
    Subconscious fear lives in the cells of most people. Our systems fan the flames of fear in a widespread way.

    Humanism- I term I like to use to imagine a world where we all enjoy freedom, love and health in communities who engage to uncover the FOUNDATIONS of issues when they arise.
    And ensure there are needs met for EVERYONE – in our current context it could seem daunting. Yet gathering physical & Human Resources and fairly distributing to where need exists … will be very inspiring and soul-nourishing for EVERYONE.

    As another commenter noted: we do not require “experts” and/or psychiatrists from the antiquated systems. My sincere belief.

    I have lived experience with “psychosis” [2012, 2013, 2015] and am a long ago retired Family Physician (worked just over 5 years before I left the profession in 2000- I did not feel to write prescriptions).

    An aside: I have observed that nearly always when the Psychiatry System is portrayed in TV & Movies, it reads as a punishment or silencing of someone who has uncovered some “inconvenient” truth.
    So the writers out there have taken full notice … while the system plays out for decades.
    Deep down, if anyone chose to put focus & awareness on this issue, they know too.
    Quite the tangle now that things have been running for generations.
    One day, we will need to “CALL IT”.

    Report comment

  8. I’m new to MIA. I’m impressed by the above comments. I have 40+ years in the “helping” professions. Long ago left behind any notions that diagnoses were True and Drugs were the solution. I’m working on developing a small group of people to engage in growth and healing outside of any professional setting….just together, with some helpful group norms and structures to facilitate deeper conversation with a goal of moving toward unconditional positive regard for one another, including differences of age, gender, religious background or practice, and to trust the intrinsic goodness of human beings as a whole. The larger structures, global, national, state, etc seem so inundated with corruption that all I can see at this point is going in the other direction, inwardly into my essential self, and in person to those who come weekly to sit and listen deeply to one another. Thanks for all the courage I see display here in this thread as well in the website. It fits with what my own experience has been.

    Report comment

  9. Fund any institution and it’s just a matter of time until it becomes a bloated bureaucracy full of highly paid “experts” and “administrative staff”, the money siphoned off by the top, leaving too little for the ones being “cared” for. Haven’t we seen enough of this to go there again?

    Yep, nope, not buying it. We tried the “caring, holistic” institutions remember the Quakers and their concerns over how the “mentally ill” were treated, which resulted in “ moral therapy”. They tried, they really did, and ultimately failed.

    Same song, second verse.

    I ditto not saving a thing, letting it fail all by itself. Let psychiatry realize their failure and hopefully the profession will cease to exist. Don’t pump any more money into this sinking ship.

    Report comment

  10. It’s interesting to read the comments. I have been involved with UN human rights work for more than 20 years related to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and have advocated in recent years a paradigm shift away from mental health discourse and practices, which I see as closely linked to eliminating the mental health system’s coercive powers. You can download my book on this, Reimagining Crisis Support: Matrix, Roadmap and Policy at http://www.reimaginingcrisissupport.org.

    It is also worth knowing that the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities adopted Guidelines on Deinstitutionalization in 2022 that take an approach substantially in line with what I advocate. You can read the Guidelines at https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/legal-standards-and-guidelines/crpdc5-guidelines-deinstitutionalization-including. Pay particular attention to paragraphs 10, 13, 15, 58 and 76 (yes I know the numbers by heart, smile). Oh, and section IX as a whole dealing with reparations.

    My paper Deinstitutionalization as Reparative Justice: A Commentary on the ‘Guidelines on Deinstitutionalization, Including in Emergencies’ argues that the DI Guidelines as a whole provide a template for reparations to survivors of forced psychiatry and other institutionalization – starting with complete ending of the violations and guarantees of non-repetition. The DI Guidelines also significantly shift power away from existing service systems particularly the mental health system, and especially those that have perpetrated institutionalization. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws13020014

    I have read and skimmed the whole of this recent WHO guidance (which is more than the first module of 44 pages). From what I can tell, there is no actionable or indicator-measured obligation promoted in these materials, to legally end involuntary measures in the mental health system. The section on deinstitutionalization co-opts and undermines the CRPD Committee’s DI Guidelines. Survivors should insist on full freedom from psychiatry – both in the sense of enforceable legal guarantees to not be subjected to it against our will, and also to have good quality supports that are not dependent on mental health system funding or policy or personnel. Learn the DI Guidelines – the CRPD Committee doesn’t have the resources of WHO but it is independent of the psychiatric system and has as its priority upholding the rights of people with actual or perceived disabilities, including the survivor community.

    Report comment

  11. The whole idea that a world (human construct) organization aiming to govern the minds of the masses promotes the word globe or global shows the masses how ridiculous these mind controlling organizations have become

    Nice to see that people care mind you, and just like the truth being exposed about vaccines and other prescription drugs, it’s comforting that some common sense and logic is leaking into the brains of otherwise illogical minded folks who believe in these spell binding cults

    Working with and never against

    With Love

    Report comment

  12. This isn’t just my opinion.
    It’s the product of years of big-picture visioning, community collaboration, and solidarity with the consumer/survivor/ex-user movement.

    I’ve read the WHO’s new guidance on mental health, crisis, and human rights—and I can’t stay silent.

    While the language starts strong, the actual guidance falls short.
    There is no call for states to prohibit coercion by law.
    No requirement to repeal involuntary treatment or detention.
    Instead, coercive practices are to be “monitored” through complaint systems we already know are broken—systems where records are doctored, processes are performative, and outcomes rarely deliver justice.

    Let’s be clear:
    Complaint systems are not protection.
    Policy without teeth is not rights-based reform.
    And lived experience is not a rubber stamp.

    We are not newcomers to this conversation. We’ve been building this movement for decades—calling for abolition of coercive practices, real community supports, and structural change rooted in the CRPD, OPCAT, and our own lived wisdom.

    This guidance extends the psychiatric system’s control with a new human rights-friendly face.
    It reinforces institutional power under the guise of care.
    It offers co-optation where there should be reparation.

    We didn’t fight this long to end up with a glossier version of the same harm.

    Report comment

    • Excellent points and very well made, I thought, Alisa. Thank you!

      I believe the blind are still leading the blind but it seems to me that they are very well meaning and that they have come to realize that they are indeed in a dark pit.

      Yes, in a perfect world – actually, in any number of any number of people’s perfect worlds, like Amnesty International, WHO (or the WHO, I ask myself) would long, long ago had the wisdom and the gumption to have come out and condemned all deprivation of freedom of law-abiding citizens apart from those proven in courts of law to be so lacking in capacity as to endanger themselves.

      I reckon they know this by now – they have that much insight but not the gumption of the clout to back it up. Probably like Amnesty International?

      There is, of course, no such thing as “mental health” or as any “mental condition” which does not afflict us all – once we accept that, as Eckhart Tolle so eloquently puts it in his book, “Stillness Speaks:”

      “The human condition: lost in thought.”

      There are no mental conditions any more than there are psychological, mental, psychiatric, behavioral or personality “disorders:” there are merely counteless spectra along which we all move and have our being and across which no clear “clinical” lines can be drawn at any points.

      Apparently since at least 1641 or whenever Descartes’ departure from truth – Cogito, ergo sum – misled the Enlightenment, experts continue to equate psyche with mind.

      Once we glimpse that vast, vast, endless realm of Consciousness (or Zen or “the Kingdom of God” etc.) in which our thinking comes and goes, arises and recdeds, tricks us and fools us, and makes us belive absurdities (such as that YOLO, you only live one short, finite human lifetime and so suicide must be avoided at all costs etc. and the most extravagant breaches of human rights are justified if someone is thought to be “of suicidal ideation” etc.) and to commit atrocities as a result…once we glimpse that realm and realize that our thinking-and-emoting (egoic) minds have evolved with our personal and species’ physical preservation in mind….and that, without guidance from our higher selves, and left to themselves, these minds have an innate tendency to take us over and to make our lives into hypervigilant, ever-surveilling, angst-ridden, neurotic and psychotic hells…once we see this, we cannot but learn to take remedial action OURSELVES!

      The Stoics and countless other ancients arrived at this conclusion.

      His Prince Hamlet observed that “Nothing is either good nor bad but thinking makes it so.”

      In spite of this truism, contemporary scientists continue to insist that we possess peripheral “pain-receptors!”

      And, as Thomas Szasz so memorably reminded us, Shakespeare’s King Macbeth knew that, sometimes, at least, the patient must minister to the patient’s self:

      Macbeth
      Cure her of that.
      Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
      Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
      Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
      And with some sweet oblivious antidote
      Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
      Which weighs upon the heart?
      Doctor
      Therein the patient
      Must minister to himself.

      https://myshakespeare.com/macbeth/act-5-scene-3

      There never has been nor can thee ever be any (truly) scientific definitions of sanity or of insanity, of mental health or wellbeing or of mental or emotional ill-health, nor of a single so-called psychological or psychiatric, mental, personality or behavioral disorder.

      (Mind you, Alisa, I don;t know of any satisfactory scientific definition of “science” or of “a scientist,” either – do you, please?)

      But I am convinced that this WHO document is symptomatic of a turning tide, at least.

      I believe your name may mean “noble.”

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgikdLHaAcE

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgikdLHaAcE

      Thomas Szasz has emphasized that your task is a most noble one.

      Thank you for working so hard and so well at it!

      Thank you to Michelle Funk for doing likewise!

      Wishing you mirth,

      Tom.

      Report comment

  13. God created us in his image to be with him in his Kingdom until in the garden betrayal entered. His plan as the Bible tells us is to bring us back to him without sin to again be forever with him.

    So called “mental illnesses” are not diseases of course but evidence of painful struggles of those feeling unloved lost and hopeless for any love, salvation or redemption. Out of love God sent Jesus to suffer for our sins and provide his children a path towards finding him again and being reunited. Jesus as God in the flesh taught love God with all your might and love your neighbor and through me you will be reunited. Neither Jesus nor Saul/Paul taught sin..sin sin was removed in belief and faith. Jesus taught radical acceptance of anyone with faith.
    I agree with all that is said here about organizations attempting to reform powers that will not be reformed. It’s in our hands to unite together to provide each other what is missing in our lives that can only be given by our belief in one who loves us deeply unconditionally and wants so desperately to be with us in love. Our faith alone is not enough. It is our connections with each other in love for our Savior and for each other together in faith that provides the strength to overcome our adversities. God has given us what we need we have to see and believe in the Truth he has provided

    Report comment

LEAVE A REPLY