By Alberto Vásquez Encalada
I’m glad to share that my new piece for the American Bar Association’s Human Rights Magazine is out: “Involuntary Mental Health Treatment: A Human Rights Crisis in Authoritarian Times.” In it, I argue that the renewed push for coercive mental health measures, often targeting people who are unhoused or use drugs, reframes structural failures (housing, income, care) as individual pathology and turns to institutionalisation—through involuntary commitment and other coercive measures—instead of rights-based, community support.
I drafted the piece back in March 2025, before Trump issued an executive order expanding involuntary civil commitment and defunding Housing First. But this is not just a U.S. story. We’re seeing similar measures elsewhere: in Uruguay, a 2024 law expanded the grounds for forced hospitalisation of people experiencing homelessness; in Singapore, new amendments gave police wider powers to detain people with psychosocial disabilities deemed a “safety risk,” even before imminent harm; and in Argentina, Milei’s government is pushing to expand coercive mental health powers, particularly around drug use. Different places, same pattern—treating poverty, disability, and drug use as public-order problems to be contained rather than rights issues to be addressed through housing, support, and inclusion.
Our response has to be collective. When we silo “mental health” from housing, disability rights, harm reduction, tenants’ organising, or social protection, we weaken our own struggles. The alternatives are already known and proven: invest in housing and income supports; expand community-based, peer-led, non-coercive services; uphold legal capacity and consent; and build power with those most affected. These will only be possible if our movements stand together.
Read the full article on the ABA website.
Featured image: Olga Azikian at a march in Uruguay, holding a sign reading “For a Uruguay free of asylums.” Photo by Rodrigo Collins.
Mad Thinking 