Seventeen years after the United Nations called for an end to coercive psychiatric practices, forced treatment remains widespread, legally sanctioned, and largely unreformed.
In a new article published in a special issue of the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry on “Mental Health Law,” legal scholar Laura Davidson reviews the limited progress made in this area. Despite the 2006 adoption of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which demanded a shift from involuntary treatment and institutional care to autonomy, equality, and non-discrimination, Davidson finds that the core practices the treaty sought to eliminate remain firmly entrenched.
Focusing on the legal frameworks of England and Wales but drawing implications for global mental health governance, Davidson critiques the continued dominance of the biomedical model and the political deadlock among UN bodies over coercive care.
“Hard cases”â those involving violence, crisis, or perceived incapacityâare still routinely used to justify detentions and forced interventions, in direct contradiction to the CRPD’s call for rights-based alternatives.
âThe wide-ranging scope of discriminatory, coercive practices prohibited under the CRPD encompass involuntary hospitalisation and enforced medical treatment, mechanical, physical, and chemical restraining, and forced seclusion and segregation,â she writes.
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Does it make sense to describe individuals experiencing various states of emotional distress (alienation, prolonged bereavement, withdrawal, defiance, depression, fear of body shaming and bullying, etc.) as people afflicted with “disabilities?” Perhaps their alleged psychiatric disorders are not a genuine syndrome at all, but a justified response to rejection, ridicule, or unrealistic expectations on the part of their parents, peers, and society in general. The word “disability” often carries negative connotations, which I think are misplaced when it’s applied with an overly broad brush by mental health practitioners who fancy themselves the ultimate arbiters of appropriate conduct.
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