The law under fire was a 1978 measure outlining, in its Article 35, the criteria and procedures under which a person may be involuntarily detained in Italy. According to mental health watchdog the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), although the criteria to initiate involuntary commitment is strict the reality is different.
According to CCHR, “Involuntary hospitalizations (i.e., forced admissions) are quite frequently carried out without fully respecting the regulations, taking advantage of the fact that almost no one is aware of the laws and the rights of the hospitalized person. Often, the patient is kept in the dark about the fact that, after seven days, they can leave the ward and thus … are held.”
Italy’s recent landmark decision is just the latest in an escalating drumbeat of victories for human rights.
CCHR adds that during the seven-day maximum involuntary detention, there is often “a terrible state of weakness, confusion, depersonalization and alienation on the part of the patient who, besides suffering the trauma of deprivation of freedom, is often subjected to heavy psychopharmacological therapies that do nothing but annihilate them as an individual, making them appear ‘harmless and docile’ in the eyes of the staff.”
If considered “rebellious,” the victim can also be placed in physical restraints and isolation.
But with the new ruling, justice has at last prevailed and Italy’s notorious Article 35 has been found unconstitutional. For generations, the psychiatric industry has failed to recognize the dignity of those it pretends to serve, instead employing abusive and coercive practices like involuntary commitment, which continue to expand unchecked. In the United States, for example, involuntary psychiatric detentions have outpaced population growth by a factor of three.
Thankfully, with CCHR’s international advocacy driving change, Italy’s recent landmark decision is just the latest in an escalating drumbeat of victories for human rights:
- In 2023, scientific research amplified the global call for reform, with a study published in BMC Psychiatry finding that psychiatric coercion—far from being “necessary”—undermines human rights and “should be avoided.” That same year, the prestigious The Lancet medical journal echoed the conclusion, warning that coercive psychiatric practices violate patients’ rights and that safer, more effective alternatives are not only possible but less costly.
- Building on that growing consensus, in October 2023, the World Health Organization took a decisive stand, calling for a global ban on involuntary psychiatric practices and affirming every patient’s right to refuse treatment—marking a major shift from a leading global authority on public health.
- In June 2025, King Charles III awarded Victor Boyd, a longtime CCHR volunteer, with the New Zealand Order of Merit. Boyd spent five decades exposing coercive psychiatric practices, particularly those used against children at the now-closed Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital. His advocacy helped prompt a formal government inquiry and national acknowledgment of psychiatric torture and abuse.
- Hungary has also taken a major step forward—the culmination of nearly a decade of work by CCHR to confront a longstanding injustice: Parliament’s failure to provide a legal path for victims of unlawful psychiatric detention to seek redress. CCHR assisted a patient in challenging his 2016 involuntary commitment, ultimately culminating in the Ministry of Justice proposing a legal amendment, enacted on December 20, 2024, establishing a victim’s right to compensation for enduring coercive, unlawful psychiatric commitment.
For decades, CCHR has chipped away at this mountain of systemic abuse, through which psychiatry has treated human beings as wallets for the plucking and bodies for the taking with no regard for their human rights.
But now Italy is setting a new standard. New Zealand, Hungary, and the United Nations and World Health Organization are already on board.
Which is why CCHR is urging the United States to front up and do likewise, stating, “The growing international rulings, government acknowledgments and awards highlight a turning tide—and now is the time for the United States to implement legal reforms that respect the rights, liberty and dignity of all individuals in mental health settings.”
America, are you listening?
