Strategies to Achieve a Rights-Based Approach through WHO QualityRights

Numerous reports from countries, the UN, NGOs and the media underscore extensive human rights violations experienced by people with psychosocial disabilities, including the denial of the right to exercise their legal capacity. Within the mental health care context people report that services do not respond to their needs and fail to respect their will and preferences or to support community inclusion. This underscores the need to adopt a human rights approach in mental health and to radically shift the way services operate, towards care and support that is recovery and rights oriented and that ensures service users are the drivers of their own healthcare. WHO QualityRights, established in 2012, is an initiative to improve access to good-quality mental health and social services and to promote the rights of people with psychosocial disabilities worldwide in line with the CRPD. The initiative works in several areas: capacity building to combat stigma and discrimination and promote rights and recovery; creating community-based services that respect human rights and person-centered recovery approaches; supporting civil society movements and people with lived experience to conduct advocacy and influence policymaking; and reforming policy and law in line with the CRPD and other human rights standards.