Welcome to the 21st WCP Virtual Congress Program Scheduling

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CPRD) is the first international treaty which brings the rights of persons with disabilities into the ambit of international law. It specifically mentions people with mental disabilities in its Article 1. There has been a great deal of controversy regarding the implications of the CRPD on the practice of psychiatry. The CRPD has been hailed as ‘the dawn of a new era’ in disability rights. Some commentators have enthusiastically endorsed the CRPD as providing an invaluable new trajectory and horizon for human rights protection and promotion in mental health. Other experts, while acknowledging the many merits of the human rights framework adopted by the CRPD, have also pointed to the ‘ambiguities’ and ‘inconsistencies’ in the actual text of the convention, or to the fact that the convention is ‘silent’ when it comes to forms of involuntary psychiatric treatment. Still others have claimed that the convention would leave many people with mental health conditions worse off by interfering with efforts to protect them and called it a ‘problem child of international human rights law’. This symposium will discuss the application of the CRPD to mental health care. The relevant articles of the CRPD will be presented briefly, along with a description of controversies in their interpretation. This will be followed by the presentation of two clinical vignettes to have an interactive discussion and debate on the application of the CRPD to mental health care.