Adherence to the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities in Czech Psychiatric Hospitals: A Nationwide Evaluation Study

This study sought to evaluate the quality of care in Czech psychiatric hospitals and adherence to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Each psychiatric hospital was evaluated by a team comprising a service user, a psychiatrist, a social worker, a human rights lawyer, and a researcher, all trained in using the World Health Organization’s QualityRights Toolkit. We conducted content analysis on internal documents from psychiatric hospitals, observed everyday practices, and conducted 579 interviews across public psychiatric hospitals between 2017 and 2019. We found that none of the CRPD articles as assessed by the QualityRights Toolkit was fully adhered to in Czech psychiatric hospitals. We recommend both facility- and system-level interventions to improve CRPD adherence in the Czech context and in the wider region of Central and Eastern Europe. To achieve this, substantial investments are required.