The ECHR and the Human Rights Problem in Mental Health
The ECHR and the Human Rights Problem in Mental Health

Summary/Abstract: The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is a widely recognized treaty for the protection of human rights adopted in 1950. It continues to be an important foundation for a European identity today. The convention’s section on the right to liberty and security of the person (Article 5) however is based on what today is recognized as outdated and discriminatory viewpoints in that it specifies an exception from the general human rights safeguard for “persons of unsound mind, alcoholics or drug addicts or vagrants”. A study of declassified documents on the drafting process of the ECHR revealed that the exception was formulated by representatives of the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden, with the British taking on a leading role proposing the text related to persons with mental health problems. These countries had strong eugenic movements at the time of the formulation of the ECHR and had implemented such principles and viewpoints in their legislation and practice. The ECHR drafting committee wrote into the Convention that psychiatric involuntary commitments and deprivation of liberty of an alcohol dependent or a vagrant are in accordance with human rights as long as these are based on national laws. This ECHR article 5, 1(e) in the recent years has become a problem causing an increasing divide between international human rights of the United Nations and the ECHR human rights of Europe. This is a situation that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe over the last year has been addressing through a motion on the Detention of the “socially maladjusted”.

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