Tag: united nations

Despite the UN’s strong stance against involuntary treatment, many countries continue to uphold legislation that encourages it.

Treating those struggling with emotional distress and troublesome behaviors as mentally disabled is a barrier to arriving at humane and dignified ways of assisting them.

The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has announced a series of regional consultations on deinstitutionalization.

Public mental health authorities continue to oppress persons with psychosocial conditions through a combination of punitive and discriminatory laws that are constructed with a "best interests" paradigm in mind and a medical model that pathologises difference and dissent. 

In Pūras' new UN report, his use of biomedical language seems at odds with his message to move beyond the medicalization of distress.

Psychiatric survivors in Canada tell the UN that Canada is not complying with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

Such interventions, the report says, "generally involve highly discriminatory and coercive attempts at controlling or 'correcting' the victim’s personality, behaviour or choices and almost always inflict severe pain or suffering."

New qualitative research finds a shift in the meaning of gender as it enters the local lexicon of people in rural Malawi, in turn having negative ramifications for those it is meant to help.

On World Mental Health Day, UN expert Dainius Pūras calls for a shift away from medical solutions toward a rights-based approach to make life “more liveable.” He calls for states to address societal determinants of mental health, promoting autonomy and resilience.

At a recent conference on legal capacity, I was struck by the failure of another invited expert to adhere to the paradigm of supported decision-making as articulated by the CRPD Committee. We still need to work to ensure that this paradigm is well understood and appreciated, despite the progress made in national reforms.

UN official writes that States should focus instead on resolving social inequality and injustice as determinants of health and human rights.

Debate ensues as scholars and policymakers discuss how to bring a rights-based approach to mental health policy.

From YES! Magazine: "To address the dramatic increase in mental and emotional distress in the U.S., we must move beyond a focus on the...

Mental Health Europe and the British Psychological Society are looking for signatories to a letter endorsing the recent United Nations Special Rapporteur's report on...

In a new report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Dainius Pūras, calls for a move away from the biomedical model and “excessive use of psychotropic medicines.”

"There is a need of a shift in investments in mental health, from focusing on 'chemical imbalances' to focusing on 'power imbalances' and inequalities"