Mental health: Promoting and protecting human rights

Mental health is a basic human right for all people.

Everyone, whoever and wherever they are, has a deserving and inherent right to the highest attainable standard of mental health.

This includes:

• the right to available, accessible, acceptable and good quality care; and
• the right to liberty, independence and inclusion in the community.

Having a mental health condition should never be a reason to deprive a person of their human rights or to exclude them from decisions about their own health.

Unfortunately, people with mental health conditions around the world experience a wide range of human rights violations.  Many experience coercive practices including involuntary admission and treatment as well as seclusion and restraint. It is also common for people to be excluded from community life, discriminated against, denied basic rights such as food and shelter, and prohibited from voting or getting married.

Many more cannot access the mental health care they need or can only access care that violates their human rights. In many places, lack of community based services means that the main setting for mental health care is long-stay psychiatric hospitals or institutions, which are often associated with human rights violations.

• By ensuring laws and policies related to mental health are in line with internationally agreed human rights conventions. Countries should ensure their policies and laws related to mental health both protect and promote mental health. While many countries have sought to reform their laws, policies and services since the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006, too few have adopted or amended the relevant laws and policies on the scale needed to end violations and promote the human right to mental health.
• Improve human rights in mental health services. Ways to assess and improve quality of care and human rights conditions should be established to protect against inhuman and degrading treatment, poor living conditions and involuntary admission and treatment. People should be able to file complaints in cases of human rights violations.
• Replace psychiatric institutions with community care. Large institutions, which are often associated with human rights violations, should be replaced by community mental health services, backed by care in general hospital and home care support. Mental health services need to link to services and supports in the community, enabling people living with mental health conditions to access educational, employment, social service and housing opportunities on an equal basis with others.
• Change attitudes and raise awareness. Ministries of Health, health professionals, civil society (in particular people with lived experience, organizations of persons with disabilities, and NGOs), academic institutions, professional organizations and other stakeholders should unify their efforts in educating and advocating for the rights of people with mental health conditions.
• Empower people with mental health conditions and their families. Governments should support creating and/or strengthening organizations of people with mental health conditions and as well as family organizations. These groups are in the best position to highlight problems, specify their needs, and help find solutions to prevent violations and improving mental health and other support services in countries. They have a crucial role to play in the design and implementation of policies, plans, laws and services.
• Increase investment in mental health. Governments need to dedicate more of their health budget to mental health. In addition, the mental health workforce at each level of the health care system needs to be developed and trained to ensure that all people have access to good quality mental health services that promote recovery and respect for human rights.

The QualityRights e-training is a free online course, developed by WHO, which is designed to help you:

• understand and improve your own mental health
• learn how to support friends, family and others with their mental health
• gain the knowledge and skills to tackle stigma, discrimination and coercive practices
• learn how to provide support to someone experiencing a crisis.

It is available in 11 languages. Find out more here.

The QualityRights initiative aims to support countries to assess and improve the quality of care in mental health and related services and to promote the rights of people with psychosocial, intellectual and cognitive disabilities.