The Zandvoort Declaration on Common Interests

1. 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).

2. 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.

3. Actions
   

   1. 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).

   2. 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.

   3. 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.