UN and WHO launch new guidance to address human rights in mental health care News
© Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons
UN and WHO launch new guidance to address human rights in mental health care

The World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Human Rights Office launched new guidance on Monday to improve laws addressing human rights violations in mental health care. The guidance encourages countries to rethink their approach to mental health policy so that the individual’s dignity and human rights are at the center of conversation and care.

The 208 page guidance, titled “Mental health, human rights and legislation: guidance and practice” is concerned with ensuring that mental health policy is in accordance with international human rights law. Major concerns of the guidance include deinstitutionalization and ending “coercive practices” such as conversion therapy. The guidance concludes with a checklist to rate categories such as community inclusion, accountability and policy implementation.

The guidance rejects what it calls a “Western biomedical model” of medicine. The rejection of the western biomedical model is related to the belief that the discourse created by early psychiatry both legitimized the institutionalization of those who suffered the plight of mental disease, and coerced the rational into accepting the institutionalization of the mentally ill. Such a model is rejected in the guidance for its tendency to marginalize and, in some cases, to legitimize human rights violations and coercive mental health practices.

The new “rights-based” model is intended to be more inclusive towards women, the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalized communities. Included in this model are efforts to enable person-centered and community-based services, raise awareness and challenge stigmas surrounding mental health, eradicate discrimination and coercion, promote inclusivity and participation, as well as develop accountability measures.

The guidance states:

[Current m]ental health law often reduces persons experiencing distress to being a “problem.” This framing often leads to stigma; an overemphasis on biomedical treatment options; undue attention to changing the individual rather than the circumstances in which they live; and a general acceptance of coercive practices…[And that] coercion remains a core component of existing mental health laws across jurisdictions.

The guidance was released one day before World Mental Health Day.

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