A/HRC/44/48
United Nations
General Assembly
Distr.: General
15 April 2020
Original: English
Human Rights Council
Forty-fourth session
15 June–3 July 2020
Agenda item 3
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights,
including the right to development
Right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable
standard of physical and mental health
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the
enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental
health
Summary
In the present report, submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 42/16,
the Special Rapporteur elaborates on the elements that are needed to set a rights-based
global agenda for advancing the right to mental health.
The Special Rapporteur welcomes international recognition that there is no health
without mental health and appreciates the different worldwide initiatives to advance all
elements of global mental health: promotion, prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and
recovery. However, he also emphasizes that despite promising trends, there remains a
global failure of the status quo to address human rights violations in mental health-care
systems. This frozen status quo reinforces a vicious cycle of discrimination,
disempowerment, coercion, social exclusion and injustice. To end the cycle, distress,
treatment and support must be seen more broadly and move far beyond a biomedical
understanding of mental health. Global, regional and national conversations are needed to
discuss how to understand and respond to mental health conditions. Those discussions and
actions must be rights-based, holistic and rooted in the lived experience of those left
furthest behind by harmful sociopolitical systems, institutions and practices.
The Special Rapporteur makes a number of recommendations for States, for
organizations representing the psychiatric profession and for the World Health
Organization.
GE.20-05623(E)