💻 2026.01.19 New CHRUSP Recommendations to Avoid Replicating Coercion
Mission
The Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (CHRUSP) aims to provide strategic leadership in human rights advocacy, implementation and monitoring relevant to people experiencing or labeled with madness, mental health problems or trauma.
In particular, CHRUSP works for full legal capacity for all, an end to forced drugging, forced electroshock and psychiatric incarceration, and for support that respects individual integrity and free will.
CHRUSP is a user/survivor-run DPO (disabled people’s organization) and human rights organization, with Special Consultative Status to UN ECOSOC. CHRUSP works at the global level, in cooperation with user/survivor organizations and allies anywhere in the world; and at the national level in the United States, where it originated.
This website hosts a valuable Library of resources for survivors and allies. Check it out! And send us your suggestions for additional materials to include.
Getting Started
Below are some key materials to get you started as a survivor/user/Mad person or ally, to use the CRPD and fight for our human rights.
💻 Tips on using the site: Use our Search function to find specific content. And use DeepL or Google Translate or another translator of your choice to translate files and external links.
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
CHRUSP founders worked to create the CRPD, a binding UN treaty that changed international law to prohibit forced psychiatry.
Know the CRPD and key interpretive materials to fight for abolition in your country and build the inclusive societies and supports we all need.
CRPD 101 presentation by Myra Kovary puts CRPD into plain language
UN interpretive materials
CRPD General Comment No. 1 on Article 12 (legal capacity with no exceptions for ‘unsound mind’, prohibits guardianship and forced treatment)
Correction of paragraph 27 (removes unintended loophole in GC1)
CRPD Guidelines on liberty and security of the person (Article 14) (involuntary hospitalization is arbitrary detention and violates legal capacity; equality in criminal proceedings and elimination of security measures/forensic psychiatry)
Report of Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak (applies CRPD to anti-torture framework)
Report of Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer (forced psychiatry ‘may well amount to torture’)
CRPD Guidelines on Deinstitutionalization (immediate obligation to release people and halt new admissions in psychiatric involuntary settings; de-medicalized supports and services; inclusive communities; reparations)
Advocacy Opportunities
You can advocate at the UN and use the CRPD to fight for your human rights!
Get to know the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD Committee) and their work.
Using Human Rights Mechanisms explains how you can use CRPD and other international law to defend our human rights, including in countries that have not ratified CRPD.
#WithdrawOviedo
Urge European countries to oppose the draft additional Protocol to the European Convention on Bioethics and uphold CRPD standard prohibiting forced psychiatry. See more in Using the CRPD
New treaty on the rights of older people
In February 2026 the UN will begin work on a treaty on the rights of older persons. Contact us to help maintain CRPD rights to legal capacity and living independently as we age. See more in Intersectional Oppressions
Endorse Hierbabuena-ActivaMent position on law reform
Hierbabuena (Asturias) and ActivaMent (Catalunya) propose detailed changes to a draft mental health law reform to end psychiatric coercion and ensure real, community-based voluntary support. Learn more and add your endorsement (in Spanish)
Key Resources
Strengthen your knowledge and connections as a human rights defender with these CHRUSP projects:
Absolute Prohibition Campaign – networking for survivors and allies. Email us if interested!
CRPD from a Survivor of Psychiatry Perspective – self-study course for a deeper dive.
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Read the legal reforms that countries have started to enact to abolish forced psychiatry and end substitute decision-making.
Mexico’s Health Law reform (Spanish, and English translation)
Peru’s Civil Code reform (Spanish, and English translation) and Colombia‘s and Mexico‘s (Arts. 455-455)
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Learn about reframing madness and support needs.
Reimagining Crisis Support: Matrix, Roadmap and Policy (by CHRUSP president Tina Minkowitz)
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See our Library for full range of resource materials.
And our YouTube channel for CHRUSP webinars and related videos