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First European Conference of Users and Ex-Users in Mental Health. Zandvoort, The Netherlands, October 1991

The Zandvoort Declaration on Common Interests

General statements

• The European Network is against the medical unilateral approach to, and stigmatisation of, mental and emotional distress, human suffering and unconventional behaviour.

• The European Network should support users' autonomy and responsibility in making their own decisions (self-determination).

Areas of main interests

• To influence and try to change present treatment in psychiatry.

• Create and support new alternatives to the psychiatric treatment.

• The European Network should act against all kinds of discrimination in society concerning people who went through the psychiatric System.

Actions

1. Psychiatric treatment

   • Work on abolishing compulsory treatment.

   • Increasing users' influence on their own treatment (e.g. right to describe or define their own case, right to refuse professional 'aid', right to make correction of their own record).

   • To secure that users receive adequate information (e.g. right to receive written information about all possible risks of the treatment, the users' right to establish independent advocacy).

2. Alternatives

   • Support and promote the right to professional drug free support.

   • Support of user groups setting up alternatives to medical psychiatry.

   • Support and promote the right to establish user-controlled initiatives inside and outside psychiatry.

3. Discrimination in society

   • To fight psychiatric stigma.

   • To get work for a proper salary.

   • To fight for proper housing.

   • To monitor European or national legislation on aspects of discriminating laws.