A/HRC/39/36 I. Introduction 1. The Human Rights Council, in its resolution 36/13, requested the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to organize a consultation to discuss all relevant issues and challenges pertaining to the fulfilment of a human rights perspective in mental health, the exchange of best practices and the implementation of technical guidance in that regard. 2. The consultation took place on 14 and 15 May 2018 and benefited from the participation of a wide range of stakeholders, including Member States, United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, special procedures and civil society, including persons using mental health services, persons with mental health conditions and persons with psychosocial disabilities, and their representative organizations. Participants discussed mental health as a human rights issue, and how to promote human rights through systemwide strategies and human rights-based services and support, and the exchange of good practices to combat discrimination, stigma, violence, coercion and abuse in the context of mental health. II. High-level opening 3. The President of the Human Rights Council, Vojislav Šuc, introduced the objective of the consultation, which was to discuss challenges pertaining to the fulfilment of human rights in mental health and the exchange of good practices. He thanked Portugal and Brazil for their leadership in organizing the consultation and extended his gratitude to civil society, particularly to persons using mental health services, persons with mental health conditions and persons with psychosocial disabilities, for their valuable participation. 4. The Chair of the Indonesian Mental Health Association, Yeni Rosa Damayanti, stressed that the discussion on mental health and human rights must be centred on inclusion of the rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities, which went beyond the traditional mental health approach narrowly focused on treatment. She listed barriers that persons faced, in both the global South and the global North, in accessing housing, employment, social protection and the right to political participation. Those barriers were made worse by stigma and discrimination embodied in laws and policies and reflected in attitudes held by the authorities, employers and the public at large. She emphasized that the current response and growing trend around the world towards medication and institutionalization generated further violations, which were compounded by the loss of legal capacity, ultimately leaving persons with psychosocial disabilities further behind. She expressed alarm about the ongoing process within the Council of Europe of drafting an additional protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine (the Oviedo Convention) to legitimize involuntary treatment of persons with psychosocial disabilities, in violation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in a deliberate move away from the advances made to ensure human rights in mental health, such as the QualityRights initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO). She stressed the importance of the participation and the voices of people with psychosocial disabilities themselves, and their representative organizations, in the discussions, saying: “No talk about mental health should exclude us ever again”. 5. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, stated that the right to the highest attainable standard of health was fundamental to human dignity, and that there was no health without mental health. Yet harmful stereotypes had an impact on the participation and inclusion of persons on account of actual or perceived mental health conditions, and could lead to arbitrary detention in institutions that were often the locus of abusive and coercive practices potentially amounting to torture. He deplored institutionalization as an inadequate response at all levels for children and adults with disabilities and called for the elimination of practices such as forced treatment, including forced medication, forced electroconvulsive treatment, forced institutionalization and segregation. Instead, he called on States to ensure access to a range of support services 3