By Katarzyna Widlas-Klimsiak The Council of Europe (CoE) is pursuing two different ways of protecting people who receive mental healthcare without their consent. A draft Additional Protocol to the Oviedo Convention would create binding obligations for states that ratify it. A new, non-binding Recommendation puts autonomy, consent and the prevention of coercion at the centre. The […]
Category: Mental Health
What values should a suicide prevention scheme express?
By Tessa Jane Holzman On 24 June 2025, the Australian Productivity Commission released an interim report evaluating the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement. This report paints a scathing picture of the state of the Agreement. While the PC’s recommendations are certainly important components of a robust national strategy for mental health and suicide […]
Advertising to the distressed: The commodification of mental health data in AI chatbots
By Nicole Gross and Hannah van Kolfschooten Generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI) chatbots have become an important outlet for many people around the world who are experiencing mental health issues. Of its 800 million weekly users, around 10 percent use ChatGPT for emotional support while more than one million use the chatbot to talk about issues […]
LLMs and mental health: A problem still unaddressed
By Bosco Garcia, Eugene Chua and Harman Brah ChatGPT made tragic news at the end of the summer with the case of Adam Raine, a teenage boy who, after a series of conversations with the model, ended up taking his life. The parents have initiated a lawsuit, alleging that ChatGPT acted as a “suicide coach”, […]
Is deepfake therapy ethically and legally acceptable?
By Marieke Bak and Saar Hoek When is technology helpful and when is it harmful? Can new technologies be used to create a better world, or are they only making matters worse? These are the questions that first crossed our minds when we came across deepfake therapy. All deepfake technology uses deep learning—a form of […]
Structural racism and coercion in Germany
By Mirjam Faissner and Esther Braun. William is a Black student with chronic schizophrenia under voluntary treatment in a German psychiatric hospital. The night before his death, William experiences a mental health crisis: he is screaming loudly, shadow boxing, lashing out. The doctors on the ward judge him to be a danger to himself and […]
The doctor can “see” you now – the ethical considerations of patient rights and safeguards in online mental health act assessments during Covid-19
By Lisa Schölin and Arun Chopra. It is fair to say that when the pandemic hit we were not entirely prepared to move our social lives, work, and healthcare to online platforms. Yet, we had to. But in which services, and more specifically in what situations, can remote contact sufficiently, legally, and safely be used […]
The return of psychedelics to psychiatry. Can the therapeutic effects of psychedelic experiences be justified?
By Riccardo Miceli McMillan. The use of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to treat mental illness is a paradigm which is reattracting significant attention both within medico-scientific communities as well as the public more broadly. After a long hiatus from their controversial debut during the 1960’s, psychedelics such as psilocybin (one of the active ingredients inside so-called ‘magic’ […]
Using Ulysses Contracts to prevent patients from spiralling into relapse
By Harriet Standing Many people have written about Ulysses contracts in relation to the treatment of patients with mental illnesses. However, previous discussions have not focused on the particular phenomenon known as ‘spiralling’. The inspiration for this paper came from a friend with bipolar disorder. Over the years, they had suffered the relapsing and remitting […]
To the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act 1983: Think again
By Harry Hudson The recent review of the Mental Health Act 1983, published in December 2018, focused on increasing choice and reducing compulsion. It highlighted dignity as the first casualty of compulsive powers; their use was identified as denying self-respect to patients. When discussing compulsion, it failed to properly challenge involuntary medication of patients with […]