In Armenia, as in many other parts of the world, persons with psychosocial disabilities are still regularly subjected to involuntary hospitalization and forced treatment. These practices, rooted in outdated laws and harmful stereotypes, strip away the freedom, dignity, and legal capacity of persons with psychosocial disability. But there is another way forward:

Commissioned by Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly–Vanadzor (HCAV), TCI prepared a research report titled:

“Restoring Dignity and Autonomy: Global Best Practices as Alternatives to Involuntary Hospitalization and Treatment and Pathways for Reform in Armenia.”

The report brings together the voices of persons with psychosocial disabilities, national stakeholders, and global experiences to show how Armenia can move away from the dominant institutional model towards a rights-based, CRPD-compliant system for persons with psychosocial disabilities.

It was developed through a rigorous desk review and interviews of OPD leaders, ensuring that evidence and recommendations are grounded in the lived experience and leadership of persons with psychosocial disabilities themselves.

The report attempts to:
Analyze the existing conditions, challenges, and key policy gaps shaping Armenia’s mental health system

Highlight good global practices and models that offer alternatives to forced hospitalization and treatment, such as supported decision-making models, peer-led models, rights-based non-coercive crisis responses, enabling legal environment restoring legal capacity, and deinstitutionalization strategies that enable living in the community and being included, on an equal basis with others.

Propose concrete steps for reforming the policy and practice framework for Armenia.

This is a call to action: Armenia must abolish coercion, within laws and policies, institutions, and communities. The only path forward is autonomy, dignity, and inclusion through participatory, well-resourced, time-bound reforms centering the leadership of persons with psychosocial disabilities themselves.

Read the full report to click here