On October 9, 2023, the United Nations and World Health Organization jointly released a 184 page report addressing the massive human rights violations that occur in mental health “care” all over the world—including the United States and Canada.

After looking through the document, I’m at a loss for words. I’ve spent years speaking alongside other titans, all of us trying to blow the whistle on the corrupt, evidence-less, biomedical model of mental illness that leads to detrimental over prescription, forced institutionalization, and “treatment” without consent. This work has opened all of us up to a special portal of hell, where defamation, academic mobbing, death threats, and the constant risk of getting sued is always on the mind.

(Never have I been so happy to not be associated with an institution. I have a lot more latitute to speak freely when I am not at risk of losing a license or my job with a University.)

And yet, this is a 184 page report effectively says we were right all along. Addressing the harm of the biomedical model, it proposes new legal objectives and a clear mandate for mental health systems to adopt a rights-based approach as opposed to a containment-based approach. It also admits:

Mental health and well-being are strongly associated with social, economic, and physical environments, as well as poverty, violence, and discrimination. However, most mental health systems focus on diagnosis, medication, and symptom reduction, neglecting the social determinants that affect people’s mental health.

Imagine that! Living under constant threat, whether familial or political, isn’t the way to health and wellness. Whoda thunk?

Furthermore, the document goes into considerable detail on informed consent in psychiatric care, which is generally nonexistent in current practice. This manifests in a variety of ways, from involuntary psychiatric holds to general practioners handing out antidepressants after five minute appointments to psychiatrists refusing to support their patients in tapering from psychiatric drugs.

The document says, specifically:

Countries should adopt a higher standard for the free and informed consent to psychotropic drugs given their potential risks of harm in the short and long term. . . . Legislation can require medical staff to inform service users about their right to discontinue treatment and to receive support in this. Support should be provided to help people safely withdraw from treatment with drugs.

More than anything, though, I am shocked and impressed that the WHO and UN admitted the following:

An additional concern is the explicit use of a reductionist Western biomedical model in mental health law, which works to the detriment of other holistic, person-centred and human rights-based approaches and strategies for understanding and addressing distress, trauma, and unusual perceptions or beliefs (2, 86).

Reductionist Western biomedical model! My god, if this was a snark Substack, that statement would come with a dramatic reaction gif.

Actually, fuck it. My filters are gone.

It’ll be interesting to see how—and if—this document has any real impact on legistlation and operating procedure. I doubt there will be a rush to change any laws any time soon, at least in the United States, as long as Big Pharma continues to hold their lobbying power.

However, one major change is that for those branded with scarlet letters ranging from “dangerous” to “anti-medicine” to “anti-science” we can now point to this report for hard-to-argue-with evidence and support. As I’ve said all along, change on this front is not going to come from the top down. It’s going to start with each individual taking control of their own care, and finally, there’s a document to support it.

Download the report.