Have your Human Rights been upheld in 2024?
Have your Human Rights been upheld in 2024?
From the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance
This national survey is looking at how well mental health consumers had their human rights met in 2024. We want to hear about how human rights-based approaches have respected, protected, and promoted people’s dignity, as well as times when people’s inalienable rights to mental health have been breached. Your experiences may have been in the mental health system, but also in justice, health, or other social sectors.
Please complete this survey if you are a mental health consumer/person with lived experience and/or identify as having psychosocial disability. The three terms can be interchanged for the purposes of this survey, i.e. for psychosocial disability please read mental health consumer/lived experience/person with a mental health issue. There are around 50 questions, most of which are Yes/No questions.
Human Rights and Mental Health
Australia does not have a National Human Rights Act. However, all levels of Australian governments, Federal, State and Local, are obliged to uphold their commitments to the International Human Rights conventions that Australia is signatories to. This includes the United National Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).
The UNCRPD seeks to promote, protect, and ensure that all individuals with disabilities can fully enjoy their human rights and fundamental freedoms, while also fostering respect for their inherent dignity. This Convention delineates both general and specific obligations for signatories (known as States) regarding various rights, including civil and political rights, as well as economic, social, cultural, and developmental rights. The core principles of the UNCRPD highlight respect for inherent dignity, non-discrimination, full and effective participation, appreciation of diversity, and equality of opportunity.
While we understand that there is strong evidence that applying Human Rights frameworks across society will improve the experience of people involved with the mental health sector, we also recognise that some people do not identify as mental health consumers nor identify as a person with psychosocial disability.
Additionally, Australia is a signatory to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT). OPCAT highlights the prevention of mistreatment of people in all places of detention, including locked mental health wards.
We would like to understand whether you feel your rights as mental health consumers have been respected in your interactions with various services and/or settings.
Further reading on the UNCRPD can be found at United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) | Australian Human Rights Commission
Use of survey results
The Alliance will work with the lived experience research group ACACIA to analyse the data collected from this survey. The ACACIA research group is made up entirely of people with lived experience and was created to investigate issues that are important to mental health consumers and carers in the ACT. The group also works with service providers and policy makers to drive change that improves mental health care.
The data collected from this Survey will be analysed by the research group and may be used in other research projects. As your responses are completely de-identified there is no risk that your participation in this research will be identified.
If you have any questions regarding this survey, please do not hesitate to contact Jen Nixon, National Policy and Research Manager, policy@nmhca.org.au
Survey details
The Alliance’s national human rights survey opens on 4 November 2024 and closes 31 December 2024.
