The Human Rights Defender applied to the Constitutional Court challenging the constitutionality of not considering children’s and incapable persons’ opinion when providing treatment.
In the basis of the application to the Constitutional Court lie the violations recorded by the Human Rights Defender during the monitoring visits, the results of the individual complaints’ discussions addressed to the Defender, as well as international best practice and legislative issues.
The issue is that according to the current legislation of the RA, the consent of the legal representative is already considered to be an enough condition for psychiatric assistance to children and incapable persons, including their placement in a psychiatric hospital.
As a result, their right to be heard and their right to give consent to are violated.
Moreover, because of the insufficient regulations of the legislation, there are often cases in practice when people, who are kept there on the basis of their legal representative’s consent, are considered to be treated voluntarily.
In these cases, however, in fact they are kept and being treated against their will and are refrained from the possibility of raising the issue of involuntarily treatment in the court.
The Human Rights Defender’s application is important since the disputable regulations endanger the realization children and incapable adults’ rights to physical and mental integrity, privacy and a number of other fundamental rights.