People with psychiatric and intellectual disabilities are often subjected to involuntary practices in the name of treatment or protection. These practices include civil commitment, outpatient commitment, involuntary psychiatric medication, restraint, seclusion, the use of aversive procedures, and other forms of punishment and confinement.
Coercive practices are used in emergency rooms, psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, jails, juvenile justice facilities, community programs and even public and private schools.
These involuntary practices can strip people of their rights and dignity, and cause physical harm and emotional trauma
In recent years, CPR has undertaken litigation or filed friend of the court briefs to address:
- Due process rights in civil commitment proceedings
- Excessive restraint and seclusion
- Involuntary treatment in emergency rooms
- Use of aversive procedures that inflict pain in the name of treatment
- Involuntary civil commitment of women to a state prison for alcohol and drug related disabilities
- Advance directive laws that discriminate against people with mental illness by giving them fewer rights to decide their own treatment
- Right of people with mental disabilities to make their own decisions about medication
Court Cases
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Acting Superintendent of Bournewood Hospital v. Baker Mass. 2000
Hospital cannot seek involuntary medication order for voluntary patient
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Behavior Research Institute v. Office for Children; Judge Rotenberg Center v. Department of Disability Services
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Commonwealth v. Carrara 58 Mass. App. Ct. 68, 787 N.E.2d 1128 (2003)
Civil commitment order may not restrict the movements of a committed individual to a building
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Jane Does v. Baker D. Mass. 2014
Challenge to state statute that permits the incarceration of women with substance abuse issues in Massachusetts prisons
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Sampson v. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center D. Mass. 2006
Hospital agrees to create new, non-discriminatory search and restraint policies to settle ADA damage action challenging its involuntary search, restraint, and forcible stripping of a woman with psychiatric disabilities in the hospital’s emergency department
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Shine v. Vega Suffolk Superior Court 1996
Damage action challenging the forcible intubation of a woman in an emergency room