Today, BEING released a Position Statement on Mental Health and Human Rights to be presented at TheMHS 2025.
Mental health consumers are a key group at risk of having their human rights violated. BEING’s advocacy is positioned within Australia’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), recognising psychosocial disability and reflecting diverse lived experiences. The CRPD underpins key advocacy priorities: the right to life, legal capacity, supported decision-making, autonomy over finances, freedom from involuntary treatment and detention, active involvement of people with lived experience, community inclusion, adequate housing, education, healthcare, employment, and social protection.
There are clear implementation gaps in NSW, including reliance on substitute decision-making, inadequate consumer leadership, lack of housing and failures in compliance with the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT). We recommend full CRPD integration, withdrawal of restrictive interpretive declarations, stronger lived experience governance and establishment of an independent NSW National Preventive Mechanism.
Click here to read the statement in full.