Magen Human Rights Association revealed today (Monday) in the Knesset that some of the survivors of the party massacre in Re'im were forcibly hospitalized.
The figure was published as part of the mental health report issued by the association on hospitalization data in the main psychiatric hospitals in Israel: Eitanim, Geha, Ma'ale Ha'Carmel, Be'er Sheva, Merhavim, Sha'arei Menashe, Abarbanel, Mazor, Shalvata, Lev Hasharon and Sheba.
According to the data, it appears that in 2021 there were 20,405 hospital admissions, of which 7,690 were involuntary, and in 2022 there were 20,653 admissions, of which 6,534 were involuntary, this despite a decrease from 37.68% of involuntary hospitalizations in 2021, still close to a third of psychiatric hospitalizations in 2022 (30.76) were under duress, that is, without informed consent.
A serious problem of human rights in Israel in the field of mental health
The report also shows that a warden who stayed in a psychiatric ward to guard a prisoner was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, it was reported that about a third of the total suicides of 18-year-olds and older in recent years were of people who were hospitalized at a certain point in their lives.
The percentage is higher among women than men. In 2020, 29% of all suicides in Israel were of people with a background in psychiatric hospitalization — 35% among women and 27% among men. From the latest mental health yearbook.
The association claims that the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) states that patients must not be in danger of receiving treatment or punishment that is cruel, inhuman, humiliating or torture" and recommends the prohibition of "forced treatments such as hospitalization and forced treatment, isolation, Physical restraint, as well as the administration of antipsychotic drugs, electric shocks and performing brain surgery without informed consent" the source. According to them, "We understand that in Israel there is a serious problem of human rights in the field of mental health".
"The mental health system must uproot coercive treatments"
According to officials in the association, "the mental health system must root out coercive treatments - whether in hospitalization or clinics (coerced clinical treatment is also common). It's time to remove from the world the barbaric treatments that are performed in psychiatric institutions, instead of repeatedly asking to increase budgets and manpower."
They also added that "the time has come to allow alternative institutions, whose treatments are more humane, to receive budgets to treat people in crisis."