“Persons with disabilities experiencing individual crises should never be subjected to institutionalization. Individual crises should not be treated as a medical problem requiring forced treatment or as a social problem requiring State intervention, forced medication or forced treatment.” – CRPD Committee Statement

Recent UN Disability Committee Statement Reinforces the Urgent Need for Government to Abolish Forced Psychiatric Treatment Policies

By Jan Eastgate
President CCHR International
January 23, 2026

CCHR International is calling for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to be expanded and modernized to align with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Such an amendment would extend ADA protections beyond employment and accommodation to explicitly safeguard individuals from coercive psychiatric commitment and forced treatment in healthcare settings.

CCHR’s call follows a formal CRPD Committee statement issued on January 15, 2026, urging the Council of Europe and governments “to move towards the end of the use of any form of coercion in the provision of mental health policies and services for persons with disabilities.”[1]

The Committee’s statement directly opposes the Council of Europe’s proposed Additional Protocol to the “Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being regarding the Application of Biology and Medicine: Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine,” also known as the Oviedo Convention, which seeks to expand and legitimize involuntary psychiatric detention and treatment. If adopted, this protocol would significantly weaken the human rights protections afforded to individuals labelled with mental health conditions.

Although the CRPD was adopted in 2007 and was inspired by U.S. leadership on disability rights, the United States has never ratified it, nor has it updated the ADA to reflect the treaty’s mental health human rights principles.[2] While the ADA recognizes both physical and mental disabilities, its protections are largely limited to employment discrimination and public accommodations.[3] It does not prevent forced psychiatric institutionalization or treatment.

CCHR warns that the CRPD Committee’s position is equally relevant to the U.S. context. As the organization explains: “Given the historical marginalization of persons with disabilities, it was necessary to articulate these rights and make it clear that restrictions or denials based on disability constitute human rights violations.”

The CRPD Committee further emphasizes that: “Persons with disabilities experiencing individual crises should never be subjected to institutionalization. Individual crises should not be treated as a medical problem requiring forced treatment or as a social problem requiring State intervention, forced medication or forced treatment.”

CCHR and its European chapters have actively opposed the Oviedo Protocol, arguing that it violates international human rights law by expanding involuntary commitment and forced psychiatric interventions.

On December 5, 2025, the Council of Europe’s Committee on Social Affairs acknowledged that United Nations agencies had warned the protocol would entrench coercive practices and obstruct their future abolition.[4] The CRPD Committee is now calling on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to withdraw the protocol at its January 26–28, 2026 session.

CCHR says this global development mirrors the situation in the United States, where forced psychiatric detention and treatment continue under state mental health laws and have been associated with serious abuse and preventable deaths.

The CRPD Committee’s statement underscores this concern, citing studies that show: “Involuntary commitment and coercive measure in most cases cause harm and even can cause death. There are no therapeutic benefits and studies show a lack of clear clinical evidence supporting use of coercion and involuntary institutionalization.”

One such study found that individuals subjected to involuntary commitment remain at a heightened risk of suicide, even compared to other psychiatric detainees.

These findings reflect alarming realities in the United States:

Each year, approximately 1.2 million Americans are involuntarily hospitalized for psychiatric reasons. A July 2025 U.S. study found that individuals released from involuntary psychiatric detention were nearly twice as likely to die by suicide or overdose within three months of release.[5] Children as young as six years old have been removed from schools and committed to behavioral health facilities, where they were reportedly drugged with antipsychotics.[6]

A U.S. law firm recently documented civil lawsuits alleging that Pavilion Behavioral Health in Illinois, privately owned by Universal Health Services (UHS), failed to protect minors from sexual and physical assault. Survivors reported that staff misused physical force and chemical restraints as punishment rather than care.[7] 

CCHR details many such cases in its white paper, “Urgent Need for Federal and State Enforcement, Transparency, and Penalties in Child and Adolescent Psychiatric-Behavioral Facilities.”

The CRPD Committee’s statement makes clear that:

• Forced psychiatric detention violates the CRPD’s Article 3 protections of liberty, security of person, equal recognition before the law, and Article 15 on freedom from“torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment.”

• Arguments that forced treatment for “therapeutic purposes” “cannot and should never prevail over the freedom to consent to or refuse treatment. The right to free and informed consent is an inherent element of the right to health.” Indeed, “involuntary measures cannot be usedas prevention, even if the suicide risk is high.”

• “States parties must abolish policies and legislative provisions that allow or perpetrate forced treatment…”

• The Additional Protocol hinders the “abolition of coercive practices in mental health settings” that are “contrary to the spirit and letter of the CRPD.”

• There is no justification for “these practices on the basis of [forced] treatment and therapeutic purpose (defined as ‘the rehabilitation and cure of a mental disorder’) or protection against harm to oneself or others.”

• “Involuntary placement or institutionalization…is prohibited under international law” by CRPD’s Article 14,” in that “The involuntary placement of persons with disabilities in institutions…contradicts the absolute prohibition of deprivation of liberty on the basis of disability.”

• The common criteria of “dangerousness” as a reason to justify involuntary commitment is rejected as “persons considered dangerous through general criminal law and criminal procedure.”

• The CRPD “requires new models of mental health policies and practices that embrace non-coercion, personal choice.”

• Governments are obligated “to replace the use of coercive psychiatry with support in decision-making on health-related matters and alternative service models.”

The United States could immediately enact such protections through an amended ADA and corresponding state law reforms.

Both state-run and privately owned psychiatric facilities should be required to comply with non-coercion standards as a condition of receiving federal program funding. Without this reform, the ADA fails to protect Americans with mental health disabilities from the very abuses the CRPD was created to prevent.

[1] “Statement of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: time for the Council of Europe to withdraw the draft Additional Protocol to the Convention for ‘the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being regarding the Application of Biology and Medicine: Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (ETS No 164),’” Committee CRPD, 15 Jan 2026, https://www.ohchr.org/en/treaty-bodies/crpd/statements-declarations-and-observations

[2] https://civilrights.org/blog/the-united-states-still-hasnt-ratified-the-disability-rights-treaty/#

[3] https://legal-resources.uslegalforms.com/a/americans-with-disabilities-act

[4] https://www.cchrint.org/2025/12/26/2025-a-turning-point-for-human-rights/; Carmen Leyte, “Draft Additional Protocol to the Convention on human rights and biomedicine (Oviedo Convention) concerning the protection of human rights and dignity of persons with regard to involuntary placement and involuntary treatment within mental healthcare services,” Provisional Draft, Parliamentary Assembly, 5 Dec. 2025; https://europeantimes.news/2025/12/council-of-europe-assembly-unanimously-rejects-protocol-on-involuntary-measures-mental-health/

[5] https://www.cchrint.org/2025/11/14/study-involuntary-commitment-fails-to-prevent-suicide/; Natalia Emanuel, et al., “A Danger to Self and Others: Health and Criminal Consequences of Involuntary Hospitalization,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, no. 1158, July 2025, https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr1158.pdf?sc_lang=en

[6] https://www.cchrint.org/2020/02/25/six-year-olds-ripped-from-schools/; “Florida: Police took a 6-year-old girl to a mental health facility because she was ‘out of control’ at school,” The Mercury News, 17 Feb. 2020, https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/02/16/florida-police-took-a-6-year-old-girl-to-a-mental-health-facility-because-she-was-out-of-control-at-school/; “6-year-old committed to mental health facility without mother’s consent,” NBC News 2, 16 Feb. 2020

[7] “Pavilion Behavioral Health Abuse Lawsuit [2026 Update]: Sexual Abuse Lawsuits Against Universal Health Services,” TorHoerman Law, 15 Jan. 2026, https://www.torhoermanlaw.com/uhs-lawsuit/pavilion-behavioral-health-abuse-lawsuit/