A/HRC/39/36 and holistic services combining physical and mental health, psychosocial, social and economic support, and protection. 36. Kriti Sharma elaborated on investigations conducted by Human Rights Watch into violations of the rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities in over 25 countries worldwide. Human Rights Watch had found that persons with psychosocial disabilities routinely experienced stigma and discrimination and often did not enjoy basic human rights. She called for the repeal of laws and policies that normalized coercion, including practices of involuntary treatment, electroshock therapy and the use of restraints. She pointed out that stigma may also be pervasive among officials responsible for protecting the rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities, and that even where training was provided on rights and mental health, there was commonly resort to the default response of isolation and force, due to a lack of understanding of support needs. In order to change the mindsets of key actors, they needed to witness first-hand the failings of the current system, but also to become familiar with examples of good practice across all contexts, including humanitarian situations. She called for strengthened cooperation between representative organizations of persons with disabilities and mainstream civil society, in order to tackle multiple and intersecting forms of stigma and discrimination. 37. Peter McGovern shared his experience conducting training for mental health personnel with the WHO QualityRights initiative, which provided a transformative and practical framework translating the rights-based and recovery-orientated approaches enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities into a reality for services and service users. Training necessarily included representation from all stakeholder groups, including health professionals and policy advisers, alongside persons with real-life experience of using services, and entailed engaging in discussions to identify rights denials in services through analysis of case studies, and exploring barriers to change and how to overcome them. The QualityRights initiative addressed resistance, engaged participants and built momentum to support people in a different way. Participants at training sessions concurred that rights-based approaches not only benefited service users but also service providers. Mr. McGovern stressed that the training was a call to action and a guide to how everyday changes could take place, and cited demonstrable changes in attitude to the use of coercive practices in crisis scenarios and in the respect for the individual’s right to make decisions for himself or herself after a few days of training. He concluded that the result of training was a shared ownership of service improvement plans — which opened up opportunities for wider culture change promoting a shift towards human rights-based approaches in mental health support. 38. During the interactive dialogue, statements were made by delegates from Australia, the Plurinational State of Bolivia and Peru, and by representatives of the International Network Toward Alternatives and Recovery, Mental Health Europe, Disability Rights International, Salud Mental España, the International Disability Alliance, the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, Human Rights Watch, Autistic Minority International, the Hearing Voices Network, the Indonesian Mental Health Association and the Azienda Sanitaria Universitaria Integrata, Trieste. The Peruvian delegate explained the Government’s commitment to broadening the role of community centres in mental health care, and the Bolivian delegate stressed that its mental health system also drew on indigenous healing in the national health service, integrating both into a holistic system. The Australian delegate spoke of the compounded discrimination for marginalized populations, such as indigenous peoples and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons, and referred to programmes to reduce stigma in health services by building awareness and knowledge about the impact of health issues within those communities. Civil society participants called for the elimination of coercion from mental health services and for effective legal protection and remedies, keeping rights holders, persons with psychosocial disabilities, autistic children and adults at the centre of all initiatives, stressing that their voices must not be substituted by parents or family members who were often empowered by the law to restrict their rights (through forced contraception of women with disabilities under guardianship). Good practices were noted, which included precautionary measures granted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to protect the life and integrity of institutionalized persons with disabilities, leading to the first orders for their integration back into the community; the forthcoming international gathering of the 12