6 March 2014

A hierarchy of ‘mental health’ rights?

Leading psychiatrists are calling for a hierarchy of rights for people with 'mental disorders'. In this blog post, MDAC's Executive Director argues that their views offend well-established notions of human rights. The is the first in a three-part series, based on a chapter in a new book which discusses torture in healthcare settings.
2 July 2013

Challenging abuse and neglect

Last week we launched our summer appeal, asking for your support to enable us to continue to challenge abuses in eastern Europe. Our appeal was launched the while we had several lawyers from Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Moldova in our office. With top anti-torture lawyer Phillippa Kaufman QC, we were training them on how to challenge ill-treatment through the courts. The training was funded through a $7,500 grant from the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture. This is significant in itself, because it demonstrates that this ‘mainstream’ human rights fund now fully recognises that people with disabilities can face discriminatory torture and ill-treatment.
10 May 2013

Global psychiatry: stop deploying human rights rhetoric to justify forced psychiatric treatment

On Wednesday I gave a lecture at the University of Leeds. It was about human rights and the Movement for Global Mental Health. Let me outline one of the main points which I made. OliverTalks posts next week will cover the other points.
11 March 2013

Consent to ill-treatment

Psychiatry, religion and culture all assert considerable power over individuals. A human rights approach can rebalance this power. I want to address the question: should the law allow someone to consent to what she believes to be a cure, but what others consider to be “inhuman or degrading treatment” which is banned under international law?
6 March 2013

Nigeria’s lunatic laws and evil spirits: what place for human rights?

Traditional and spiritual healers deliver the bulk of mental health ‘services’ in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. They profit from the populist belief that madness is caused by demonic possession. As a result people labelled as mad are hyper-stigmatised and families urgently want to rid the devil from their afflicted relative. Within this delusional belief system, beatings, lashings, burnings and rapes drive out the evil spirits. The colonial lunacy law provides precisely zero protections against arbitrary internment, chemical and physical restraints, and non-consensual electroshock in psychiatric hospitals. The tiny amount of psychiatrists are hospital-based and overstretched. Mental health services are largely absent from primary healthcare, save in some EU-funded pilot projects. Both the psychiatric and the traditional healing industries are unregulated, unmonitored and susceptible to corruption. Ill-treatment is carried out with impunity because perpetrators are never punished.

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