Pfeil Back to Peter Lehmann Publishing

First European Conference of Users and Ex-Users in Mental Health. Zandvoort, The Netherlands, October 1991

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

  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.