The Human Rights Defender published an
ad-hoc report on not considering the opinions of children and incapable persons
while placing and keeping them in a psychiatric hospital.
The report addresses the rights to mental
integrity, personal liberty, and a number of other rights.
In particular, the ad-hoc report records
that under the current RA legislation the consent of the legal representative
is already considered as a sufficient condition for providing psychiatric
assistance to children and incapable persons, including for their placement in
a psychiatric hospital. As a result, their rights to be heard and give informed
consent are violated.
Moreover, due to the insufficient legal
regulations, there are often cases in practice when people, who are kept there
on the basis of their legal representative’s consent, are considered to be
treated voluntarily.
In such cases, however, they are in fact
kept and being treated against their will (that is, involuntary) and thus are
automatically deprived of the opportunity to raise the issue of the involuntary
treatment in the court.
It should be noted that the Human Rights
Defender has applied to the Constitutional Court to address the issue.
The report is available here.
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