In Conversation with Dr Piers Gooding, Director, Mental Health & Disability Law Centre La Trobe University – “People with psychosis face abuse, discrimination and early death, despite global reforms”.

Áine chats with Dr Piers Gooding, newly appointed Director of the La Trobe Mental Health and Disability Law Centre about his recently published international review. The co-authored paper published in The Lancet, reviewed “350 research papers across 35 years, finding a persistent gap between global human rights commitments and the lived reality experienced by people with psychosis in low and middle-income countries”.

Piers shared, that human rights abuses and violations may include confinement, systemic discrimination and coercive practices including seclusion and restraint.

Piers stated that “advancing the rights of people with psychosis requires coordinated legislative, policy and community-based action to align national laws with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disability (UN CRPD), to end discrimination and coercion, strengthen community inclusion and promote access and investment in universal health care”.

Dr Piers Gooding is a leading national and international expert on mental health, and disability law and policy. He is author of ‘A New Era for Mental Health Law and Policy: Supported Decision-Making and the UN Convention on the Rights of People with a Disabilities’ (Cambridge University Press, 2017).