Section 2 - Advocacy and reduction of stigma

Summary

The user/survivor movement emerged in the early 1970s and became formalized in 2001 when it was launched at its founding conference in Vancouver, Canada. This chapter draws upon significant milestones in this discourse from within the user/survivor movement, starting with the paper written in 1999 by Mary O'Hagan, the founder and one of the first co-chairs of the World Federation of Psychiatric Users (WFPU), called "A call to open the door", which was a plain-language parable on human rights for people with psychiatric disabilities. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and its Optional Protocol was adopted on December 13, 2006. The CRPD recognizes disability rights as human rights. Its advocacy concern has been to end forced or coercive treatments, and help distressed receive the appropriate care they need, to be free from stigma, exclusion, and other abuses of their human rights.