Reimagining Crisis Support

Book excerpt: Reimagining Crisis Support aims to change the conversation about personal crisis from mental health discourse to one based in a social model of disability and human rights. Crisis support can be understood within a social model as support for making decisions and support to live independently in the community, as provided for in Articles 12 and 19 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Complementary to crisis support, we need community-led conflict resolution and violence prevention measures that are open to all sides of a story and sensitive to intersecting axes of oppression including disability-based discrimination?- a good fit with Articles 13 and 14 of the Convention. Policy should be developed based on these premises to replace involuntary commitment laws and coercive paternalism with a solidarity-based response to human needs and uphold the human rights of people with disabilities.