Our representative, Jolijn Santegoeds, attended the meeting of DH-BIO held on 6 June regarding the Draft Additional Protocol to the Oviedo Convention. Please see the detailed report of Jolijn about the meeting in her blog here.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has just concluded a review of Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD) and Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder (PGAD) after the discontinuation of SSRIs and SNRIs (antidepressants). On Thursday 16 May, the safety Committee of EMA concluded that "sexual dysfunction, which is known to occur with treatment with SSRIs and SNRIs and usually resolves after treatment has stopped, can be long-lasting in...

Podcast of MHE on compulsory measures in psychiatry and UN CRPD standards, involving Stephanie Wooley as one of the experts is available here.

Serious violation of patients' rights recently happened in Romania: the patients admitted to the Department of Psychiatry of the Targ-Jiu County Hospital were asked to strip and kiss, all for the amusement of the medical staff. The movie that appeared in the public space was made at the Psychiatric section of the County Hospital in Târgu-Jiu. The images show that, between the bars separating women...

It seems that Russia is planning discharge of the 45% of the current residents of psychoneurological residential facilities. They will be transferred to home care, to supported living or to the families that will take care of them. At least this is what the Minister of Healthcare and Social Affairs Mr. Topilin said. According to the statistics Russia has 155 000 persons in the residential...

The CoE's Development Fund approved a €11 million loan to the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina "for investments in psychiatric care. More specifically, it will finance the construction and modernization of six psychiatric clinics located in Banja Luka, Modriča, Sokolac, Višegrad, Sarajevo and Mostar." The six mentioned institutions have more than 900 patients and the plan says nothing about their deinstitutionalization. It is mentioned that...

An investigation on attitudes towards the use of coercion and mechanical restraint says it is possible to change the staff attitudes towards the use of coercion, e.g. mechanical restraint, through activating, diverse, and involving teaching. The staff in the research (122 staff members in total) received 6 hours of education, in how to prevent physical coercive interventions and even this intervention was enough to show...

ENUSP publishes the open letter in reaction to the latest issue of World Psychiatry (Volume 18, Issue 1, February 2019), an official journal of the WPA. We would like to express our concerns in regard to both its content, as well as the perspectives excluded when putting this issue together. We would particularly like to draw attention to the Editorial: while discussing the challenges of...

ENUSP would like to express its gratitude for the financial support received by the French Confcap-Capdroits research programme to enable our representative to attend the latest meeting and country-specific briefings in Strasbourg 8-10 October to protest the draft additional protocol to the Oviedo Convention.  The Confcap-Capdroits project was launched in 2015 as part of the dynamic of research programmes being conducted by Collectif Contrast at...

ENUSP together with EDF and 18 other organisations signs the open letter urging Member States to significantly improve the European Accessibility Act ahead of the next negotiations on 2 October. We demand that a strong European Accessibility Act is agreed upon before the next European Day of Persons with Disabilities. The European Accessibility Act was proposed by the European Commission in 2015. It aims to...