First
European Conference of Users and Ex-Users in Mental Health. Zandvoort, The
Netherlands, October 1991 back to the
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The Zandvoort Declaration on Common Interests
General statements - The European Network
is against the medical unilateral approach to, and stigmatisation of, mental and
emotional distress, human suffering and unconventional behaviour.
- The
European Network should support users' autonomy and responsibility in making their
own decisions (self-determination).
Areas of main interests
- To influence and try to change present treatment in psychiatry.
- Create
and support new alternatives to the psychiatric treatment.
- The European
Network should act against all kinds of discrimination in society concerning people
who went through the psychiatric System.
Actions - Psychiatric
treatment
- Work on abolishing compulsory treatment.
- Increasing
users' influence on their own treatment (e.g. right to describe or define their
own case, right to refuse professional 'aid', right to make correction of their
own record).
- To secure that users receive adequate information (e.g. right
to receive written information about all possible risks of the treatment, the
users' right to establish independent advocacy).
- Alternatives
- Support and promote the right to professional drug free support.
- Support
of user groups setting up alternatives to medical psychiatry.
- Support
and promote the right to establish user-controlled initiatives inside and outside
psychiatry.
- Discrimination in society
- To fight
psychiatric stigma.
- To get work for a proper salary.
- To fight
for proper housing.
- To monitor European or national legislation on aspects
of discriminating laws.
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