The World Health Organization recently issued new guidance and technical packages for community mental health services, entitled “Promoting Person?Centred and Rights?Based Approaches”. As these documents make clear, within the sphere of mental health, the provision of person?centred care is itself an issue of human rights. This is not only true in the cases of involuntary or coercive treatments – when precautions and oversight must be exercised to ensure preservation of dignity and respect under exceptional circumstances – but with regard to all forms of mental health care. All mental health care, including clinical practice, needs to be fundamentally re?oriented toward the protection and extension of each individual's right to self?determination. Re?oriented, that is, to preserving the person's integrity as an individual while facilitating and promoting the person's pursuit of his/her own unique life goals.

Source:

World Psychiatry