Mental Health: Consumer Rights & Responsibilities

People with mental health disabilities throughout the world have historically suffered human rights violations from health care professionals and facilities. These include the denial of informed consent; dangerous, forced treatments like electroshock; "warehousing" in inhumanely run facilities; forced sterilization and the stigmatization of nonconformist ideas and behaviors as "mad." In recent times, however, the rights and responsibilities of mental health patients are gaining more attention and respect.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

• Like all people, mental health consumers are covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (or UDHR, 1948). The declaration asserts everyone's right to life; liberty; security of person; freedom from "torture or...cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;" freedom from "arbitrary arrest or detention;" voluntary marriage and family; freedoms of thought, conscience, religion, opinion, and expression; and "a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of (oneself and one's) family, including...medical care and necessary social services, and...security in the event of ... sickness (or) disability." The UDHR also speaks of universal human responsibilities: "Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his (or her) personality is possible."

Convention on the Rights of People With Disabilities

• As a result of shared experiences with discrimination, people with disabilities spurred a global movement to defend their human rights. Disability rights activists, including people with psychiatric conditions, helped the United Nations craft the first 21st century human rights treaty, the Convention on the Rights of People With Disabilities (2008). The treaty asserts no new human rights, but it is important because it represents a reaffirmation that the rights of persons with disabilities are human rights and must be respected. The convention specifically refers to psychiatric conditions as disabilities.

Human Rights in the Mental Health Services Context

• Mental health advocates still have plenty of issues to address. However, because of their activism in recent years, mental health service providers are more likely to recognize psychiatrically disabled people's human rights. Since the 1980s, the World Psychiatric Association has called for informed consent in treatment and research, minimization of the scope of compulsory treatments, promotion of voluntary treatments and refusal to conduct research on involuntarily hospitalized persons.

Self-Advocacy

• Mental health advocates have long stressed personal responsibility through self-advocacy. The U.S. National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse publishes a Freedom Self-Advocacy Curriculum to encourage psychiatrically disabled persons to protect their own rights and assert their own preferences to combat discrimination and inadequate or harmful treatment. MindFreedom International actively educates mental health patients about treatment options and self-care alternatives. The World Health Organization urges people with mental health impairments to advocate for their participation in the development and implementation of mental health laws and human rights initiatives.