Dainius Pūras - Bringing Human Rights to Mental Health Care

Dainius Pūras - Bringing Human Rights to Mental Health Care

Dainius Pūras is a medical doctor and human rights advocate. He is currently serving the final year of his term as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health. He is also a professor at Vilnius University, Lithuania, and the director of the Human Rights Monitoring Institute, an NGO based in Vilnius.

Pūras has been a human rights activist for 30 years involved in national, regional, and global activities that promote human rights-based policies and services, with a focus on mental health, child health, disabilities, and the prevention of violence and coercion. He was a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child from 2007 to 2011.

From the time he was appointed to the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2014, Pūras has pushed for a paradigm shift in mental health care. During his mandate, he has written several reports that emphasize the importance of the social determinants of health and criticize the dominance of the biomedical model and the medicalization of depression. While his work has occasionally been met with derision from some mainstream psychiatric institutions, he continues to bring attention to coercive practices and human rights violations and to call for greater investment in rights-based approaches to mental health care and suicide prevention.

In this interview, Pūras discusses his own journey as a psychiatrist, his decision to get involved in human rights work, his goals for his UN reports, and the future of rights-based mental health care.

Episoder(291)

The Fight for the Soul of Psychotherapy: An Interview with Linda Michaels

The Fight for the Soul of Psychotherapy: An Interview with Linda Michaels

Linda Michaels is a psychologist in private practice in Chicago and a co-founder of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN). She trained at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology and complete...

8 Apr 1h 11min

Examining Psychiatric Medication Tapering and Withdrawal: The Evolving Role of Pharmacists — A Conversation with Agnes Higgins and Cathal Cadogan

Examining Psychiatric Medication Tapering and Withdrawal: The Evolving Role of Pharmacists — A Conversation with Agnes Higgins and Cathal Cadogan

Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, my name is James. Today, we are discussing the experiences of people who have attempted to stop taking psychiatric drugs. These experiences are captured in a sur...

1 Apr 32min

Spiritual Emergency and the Collective Work of Staying Alive: An Interview with Nisha Gupta

Spiritual Emergency and the Collective Work of Staying Alive: An Interview with Nisha Gupta

Nisha Gupta is an existential phenomenologist, a depth psychotherapist, a creativity scholar, and an artist. She's an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia and earned her...

25 Mar 48min

The Political Systems Driving Abuse in Psychiatry: An Interview with Human Rights Lawyer Alicia Ely Yamin

The Political Systems Driving Abuse in Psychiatry: An Interview with Human Rights Lawyer Alicia Ely Yamin

Alicia Ely Yamin is the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project and a lecturer at Harvard Law School. She's also an adjunct senior lecturer on health policy and management at the Harvard T.H....

18 Mar 45min

History, Eugenics, and an Inquiry into Mad Consciousness: A Conversation With Susanne Paola Antonetta

History, Eugenics, and an Inquiry into Mad Consciousness: A Conversation With Susanne Paola Antonetta

Susanne Paola Antonetta is an accomplished writer and poet, the author of numerous books, and in 2001 her book Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir, won a prestigious American Book Award. Her latest bo...

11 Mar 49min

How Our Blindness to Context Harms Patients and Breaks Practitioners: A Conversation With Kamaldeep Bhui

How Our Blindness to Context Harms Patients and Breaks Practitioners: A Conversation With Kamaldeep Bhui

Kamaldeep Bhui is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford and Honorary Professor at Queen Mary University of London. He is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work on cultura...

4 Mar 51min

UberTherapy and the Enshittification of our Relational Lives: Part 2 of our Interview with Elizabeth Cotton

UberTherapy and the Enshittification of our Relational Lives: Part 2 of our Interview with Elizabeth Cotton

Elizabeth Cotton is Associate Professor of Responsible Business at the University of Leicester and the founder of Surviving Work, which carries out socially engaged research on mental health and work....

18 Feb 39min

UberTherapy and the Enshittification of our Relational Lives: Part 1 of our Interview with Elizabeth Cotton

UberTherapy and the Enshittification of our Relational Lives: Part 1 of our Interview with Elizabeth Cotton

Elizabeth Cotton is Associate Professor of Responsible Business at the University of Leicester and the founder of Surviving Work, which carries out socially engaged research on mental health and work....

11 Feb 46min

Populært innen Helse

fastlegen
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
rss-gukild-johaug
hvordan-har-du-det-mann
psykodrama
leger-om-livet
rss-garne-damer
relasjonspodden-med-dora-thorhallsdottir-kjersti-idem
foreldreradet
morten-ramm-lar-kakla-ga-til-du-sovner
hjernesterk
rss-lopedrommen
klimaks
g-punktet
hormonelle-frida
bak-fasaden-en-reise-i-livet-med-sykepleier-ine
hverdagspsyken
sinnsyn
rss-kull
helsetipspodden