2011—2019PART C

Involuntary detention: what the courts say

Two claims here sound serious and do not hold as stated: that "the UN banned involuntary detention", and that "Greece leads Europe". Both need correcting.

OPEN DISPUTE CRPD COMMITTEE · 2014/2015
HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE · 2014
ECtHR · ROOMAN

One UN body says abolish it. Two others disagree.

The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities holds, in General Comment No. 1 (2014) and its 2015 Guidelines on Article 14, that detention on the basis of impairment and forced psychiatric treatment violate the Convention and must be abolished. Verbatim: "forced treatment by psychiatric and other health and medical professionals is a violation".

That is the interpretation of one treaty-monitoring body. It is not binding law, and it is disputed.

THE CRPD COMMITTEE, 2014

Detention on the basis of impairment constitutes arbitrary deprivation of liberty and violates Articles 12 and 14. States parties must refrain from such practices.

THE OTHER TWO

The UN Human Rights Committee, eight months later, permitted involuntary hospitalisation in General Comment No. 35 as a last resort where necessary, proportionate and accompanied by safeguards. The European Court of Human Rights, in Rooman v Belgium, expressly declined to follow the CRPD Committee.

[13] CRPD/C/GC/1 (2014), §§40, 42 · [14] Guidelines on Article 14 (2015) · [15] Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 35 · [16] ECtHR, Rooman v Belgium, Grand Chamber

COURT ECtHR · FIRST SECTION
VENIOS · 5.7.2011
KARAMANOF · 26.7.2011

Two rulings against Greece — and what for, exactly

The European Court of Human Rights has found Greece in violation of Article 5 § 1 (e) in exactly two psychiatric-detention cases, both in 2011: Venios (no. 33055/08) and Karamanof (no. 46372/09).

In both, the violation was that Greek law itself had not been followed — Law 2071/1992. In Venios, a hospital psychiatrist ordered internment without the intervention of the prosecutor or the court, and the applicant was detained 37 days without judicial review, never summoned to appear. In Karamanof, the statutory time limits were missed and the applicant was held eight days after a court had refused to order his detention.

Neither judgment holds that involuntary commitment in Greece is contrary to the Convention. Both are findings of non-compliance with safeguards that already exist in Greek law. The problem is not the statute; it is that the statute was not applied.

[17] Venios v Greece, no. 33055/08, 05.07.2011, §§53, 55 · [18] Karamanof v Greece, no. 46372/09, 26.07.2011

PEER-REVIEWED STYLIANIDIS ET AL. · 2017
SHERIDAN RAINS ET AL. · 2019
GREECE

The finding that overturns what we would like to say

It circulates that Greece has the highest rate of involuntary admission in Europe. That is refuted by the very paper cited for it.

WHAT IS TRUE

57.4%

of 946 admissions to the Psychiatric Hospital of Attica, over five months in 2011, were involuntary. That is a proportion of admissions at one hospital — not a population rate, not a European comparison.

THE EUROPEAN COMPARISON

78.9

involuntary hospitalisations per 100,000 population in Greece, against a 22-country median of 106.4. Greece is below the median. The authors themselves warn that national figures are not reliably comparable.

The two quantities are of different kinds and do not compare with each other. Anyone who puts them in the same sentence — in either direction — is misinforming you.

[19] Stylianidis S et al., Int J Law Psychiatry 2017;52:28-34, DOI 10.1016/j.ijlp.2017.04.001 · [20] Sheridan Rains L et al., Lancet Psychiatry 2019;6(5):403-417