Each year in France, over 75,000 persons are forcibly interned in psychiatric hospitals, very often at the request of a “third party”, usually a relative. In a statement endorsed by ENUSP, French user/survivor activists remind the French government that psychiatric incarceration and forced psychiatric treatment are grave violations of human rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD). Together with the Union Nationale GEM-France (UNGF), the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (WNUSP), the Center for Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (CHRUSP) and Mental Health Europe (MHE), we call on the new French government to repeal the country’s 2011 mental health law and respect the rights and dignity of all users and survivors in France. You can read the letter here in English and in French
ENUSP is working towards a Europe where:
all people are free to be themselves, are valued equally and treated with dignity,
all people have the power to make their own life choices and to speak for themselves,
all people have access to a range of supports which respect their autonomy and dignity,
all people are protected from poverty and have an equal chance to live their lives to their full potential,
all human crisis is seen in its social context; it is not medically labelled or feared, but is embraced as an opportunity for individual and community growth,
all the knowledge of people who have experienced extreme crisis is valued, cultivated and informs systems of support,
all the above conditions are equally true everywhere in Europe