Introduction

The United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is an international treaty that embeds the human rights of people with disabilities into international law. The application of the CRPD in the field of psychiatry is not straightforward, especially when various sets of rights are in direct conflict with each other. To open the debate on how best to apply the principles of the CRPD in the field of mental health, we prepared case histories based on real-life stories and asked psychiatrists, ethicists, and lived experience experts to provide commentary on human rights-based mental health care. We then included a series of eight descriptions of countries with different legal traditions partially explaining the differences in the way in which the CRPD would be employed in mental health care. Thirdly, there is a section illustrating the work of non-governmental organizations related to the CRPD by the description of three such organizations—one professional and two non-professional and their work relevant to human rights. We draw the conclusion about the need for a realistic interpretation of the CRPD, and education and training of healthcare workers in the requirements of the CRPD. In addition, we point towards the need for all governments to allocate the resources required to improve social and health services to adopt and implement the principles of the CRPD to protect and promote the rights of people with mental illness.