United Nations Commission On Human Rights - Human Rights and Mental Health

Human Rights and Mental Health

In 1977, the commission formed a "Sub-Commission to study, with a view to formulating guidelines, if possible, the question of the protection of those detained on the grounds of mental ill-health against treatment that might adversely affect the human personality and its physical and intellectual integrity". The sub-commission was charged with "determin whether adequate grounds existed for detaining persons on the grounds of mental ill-health."

The guidelines that resulted have been criticized for failing to protect the rights of involuntary patients.

Read more about this topic:  United Nations Commission On Human Rights

Famous quotes containing the words human, rights, mental and/or health:

    “Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.”
    —Victor Hugo (1802–1885)

    “The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for, not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given control of the property interests of the country.”
    —George Baer (1842–1914)

    “[T]hat moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty. It is then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions.”
    —Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

    “Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.”
    —Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)