Tina Minkowitz
Author of Reimagining Crisis Support: Matrix, Roadmap and Policy - please visit https://www.reimaginingcrisissupport.org.
President of the Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, www.chrusp.org.
Projects of CHRUSP: Self-study course on the CRPD from Survivor of Psychiatry Perspective - http://www.crpdcourse.org, and Absolute Prohibition Campaign - https://www.absoluteprohibition.org.
Blog on Mad in America: https://www.madinamerica.com/author/tminkowitz/
Personal blog: https://tastethespring.wordpress.com
See also https://independent.academia.edu/TMinkowitz
Address: Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry
President of the Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, www.chrusp.org.
Projects of CHRUSP: Self-study course on the CRPD from Survivor of Psychiatry Perspective - http://www.crpdcourse.org, and Absolute Prohibition Campaign - https://www.absoluteprohibition.org.
Blog on Mad in America: https://www.madinamerica.com/author/tminkowitz/
Personal blog: https://tastethespring.wordpress.com
See also https://independent.academia.edu/TMinkowitz
Address: Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry
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The international right to remedy and reparation can be used as a framework to demand an end to psychiatric abuse, apologies, services and support for victims/survivors, and changes in social institutions and official policy. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is being used by UN human rights mechanisms as authoritative guidance superseding earlier standards that are less protective of human rights and this gives a good basis for these demands in international law and several potential avenues for advocacy.
I’ve been interested to approach this as a lesbian and as a woman who has often been on the edge of community through my own doing and also through that of others. What place can there be for someone like me in a close-knit society that is based on motherhood? I’m not a mother, don’t have particularly strong material or social skills that I imagine would be useful. What I’m learning is, among other things, that eligibility criteria are actually not a thing of matriarchy where everybody has a place but of patriarchal capitalism where we are required to sell ourselves and justify our existence based on productivity or reproductivity.
Involuntary psychiatric interventions Involuntary commitment to psychiatric facilities can take place as civil commitment or as a medicalized imprisonment in relation to criminal proceedings. Involuntary administration of psychotropic drugs, electroshock or other measures is performed in these facilities with the aim of altering the person's mind, emotions, and behavior. Such alteration is viewed by psychiatry as treatment for conditions it describes as 'mental illness'. Involuntary 'treatment' also takes place in the criminal justice system itself, and is increasingly performed outside institutions through court-ordered compulsory treatment in the community. Involuntary commitment and involuntary 'treatment' regimes are authorized in most countries of the world by legislation, usually in the form of a Mental Health Act. With or without these legislative regimes, coercion is common in psychiatric settings and other institutions even beyond formal involuntary measures.
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The international right to remedy and reparation can be used as a framework to demand an end to psychiatric abuse, apologies, services and support for victims/survivors, and changes in social institutions and official policy. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is being used by UN human rights mechanisms as authoritative guidance superseding earlier standards that are less protective of human rights and this gives a good basis for these demands in international law and several potential avenues for advocacy.
I’ve been interested to approach this as a lesbian and as a woman who has often been on the edge of community through my own doing and also through that of others. What place can there be for someone like me in a close-knit society that is based on motherhood? I’m not a mother, don’t have particularly strong material or social skills that I imagine would be useful. What I’m learning is, among other things, that eligibility criteria are actually not a thing of matriarchy where everybody has a place but of patriarchal capitalism where we are required to sell ourselves and justify our existence based on productivity or reproductivity.
Involuntary psychiatric interventions Involuntary commitment to psychiatric facilities can take place as civil commitment or as a medicalized imprisonment in relation to criminal proceedings. Involuntary administration of psychotropic drugs, electroshock or other measures is performed in these facilities with the aim of altering the person's mind, emotions, and behavior. Such alteration is viewed by psychiatry as treatment for conditions it describes as 'mental illness'. Involuntary 'treatment' also takes place in the criminal justice system itself, and is increasingly performed outside institutions through court-ordered compulsory treatment in the community. Involuntary commitment and involuntary 'treatment' regimes are authorized in most countries of the world by legislation, usually in the form of a Mental Health Act. With or without these legislative regimes, coercion is common in psychiatric settings and other institutions even beyond formal involuntary measures.
See https://youtu.be/qs49Dtaj9ho to watch the recorded presentation.
Presentation in the form 'The human rights-based approach to psychosocial disability: agenda for the exercise of legal capacity' in Bogotá, Colombia on December 6, 2019. You can listen to the video at: https://www.facebook.com/FacultadDeDerechoUniandes/videos/480357139274436/ (my presentation begins approximately 2:02:00)
September 18, 2019
Issues include: free and informed consent, scope of stopping forced treatment, reform of both law and practices, reparations, no justifications, approach in everyday life, strategic litigation.
Como se verá más adelante, el escrito se presenta en apoyo al concepto de violación formulado por la quejosa, Documenta, Análisis y Acción para la Justicia Social y se opone al punto de vista presentado por el Congreso de la Ciudad de México ante este Tribunal, en el sentido de que las disposiciones referidas son compatibles con la CDPD y sostiene que el régimen jurídico prevaleciente que implica una declaración de inimputabilidad es ilegal en su conjunto debido a su inconsistencia con el derecho internacional de los derechos humanos vinculantes para México.
The brief opposes the view presented by Mexico City’s Congress before this Court, that the offending provisions are consistent with the CRPD. The amicus submits that the prevailing legal regime designating a status of inimputability is unlawful as a whole due to its inconsistency with international law standards binding on Mexico.
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is a near-universally ratified treaty which establishes the global standard for disability non-discrimination as both a principle and a set of specific norms relevant to all areas of substantive human rights law. The CRPD is relevant in this matter because the issues include whether Mr. Ongwen should be relieved of criminal responsibility because of "mental disease or defect."
The committee of experts that monitors compliance with the treaty has asserted that declarations of incapacity to be found criminally responsible are contrary to the CRPD "since [they] deprive[] the person of his or her right to due process and safeguards that are applicable to every defendant."
Disability non-discrimination norms and principles require and allow courts and societies to conceptualize an alternative approach whereby the rules applicable to criminal responsibility are framed and applied so as to take account of the lived reality of persons with disabilities, including those who are experiencing temporary forms of disability, on an equal basis with others.
Amici suggest an approach in which the existence of distress or unusual perceptions does not result in a separate analysis of a defendant's capacity to appreciate the unlawfulness or nature of his or her conduct, or capacity to control his or her conduct to conform to the requirements of law. Instead, the evidence of distress or unusual perceptions would be examined wherever it may be raised to negate the mental element of a crime or to establish the mental element of a partial or complete defense.
Applying this framework to this case resets the questions at stake: Did the defendant's state of mind at the time of committing the acts amount to mens rea as defined in Article 30 of the Statue, taking into account any distress or unusual perceptions he experienced at the time? Was any communication made to him that he understood to be a threat, taking into account such distress or unusual perceptions, and were his actions to avoid such threat reasonable in light of the circumstances as he understood them? A finding of culpability would not, then, hinge on whether or not a "mental illness" could be deduced in one way or another or on a finding of incapacity that places an individual outside the mutual obligations owed to other members of the community.
Although not generally acknowledged as lex specialis in the sense of being an entirely separate regime, non-discrimination treaties and their associated jurisprudence contribute specialized expertise to the development of customary law, and constitute lex specialis in the sense of specialized legislation within the human rights treaty framework. The Human Rights Committee should incorporate such norms into its interpretive work, as additional rules of law binding on an overwhelming majority of states parties to the Covenant
De-medicalized and de-linking support needs from conflict resolution needs
Based in non-discrimination, including reasonable accommodation, and rejection of punitive/coercive responses to support needs
The book's primary thesis is that crisis support can be reimagined as support for decision-making and maintaining an independent life in the community - as provided for under Articles 12 and 19 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Community-based, non-discriminatory conflict resolution and violence prevention are complementary to crisis support but are distinct as they involve more than one person's needs and interests at the same time.
The book explains its key premises and sets out some elements of decision-making support for personal crisis, then explores the Matrix of rights and implementation measures set out in the Convention that provide a scaffolding for a social, human rights-based approach to crisis support.
It then provides a Roadmap of aspirational transformations and strategies that are needed to create the conditions in which reimagined crisis support can be meaningfully realized. These range from large-scale social justice aims such as Democratize Knowledge and Strengthen Communitarian Practices to Tools such as 'Pilot projects' and 'Evaluate existing support practices'.
A section on Policy addresses key issues for translating the model presented into national policy. This should be read in conjunction with the chapter on Implementation: Legislative Reform that is included in the Matrix section.
This book is intended for diverse audiences from policymakers to grassroots activists. It is grounded in both a US context (inevitably as the personal informs the political) and wider perspectives from global networking.
ISBN 978-1-7377370-2-5
To order paperback or epub version see https://www.reimaginingcrisissupport.org