Every person has the right to genuine support for their mental and emotional wellbeing. The state has an active duty to provide accessible, properly resourced support to all who need it, drawing on the full range of approaches — including community support, nature-based therapies, nutritional approaches, traditional practices, and any other method that genuinely serves the person’s wellbeing and to which they freely consent.
Every person has the right to refuse any mental health intervention. Consent must be free, informed, and uncoerced. A person’s unusual beliefs, unconventional behaviour, social nonconformity, or inconvenience to others are not grounds for any intervention whatsoever.
Involuntary detention is permissible only where all of the following conditions are simultaneously met: the person is in acute crisis; there is clear and immediate risk of serious physical harm to themselves or to others; that risk cannot be managed by any less restrictive means; and the assessment is made by no fewer than two independent practitioners with no institutional or financial interest in the outcome.
Any person involuntarily detained must be brought before an independent court or tribunal within forty-eight hours. Detention may not be extended without fresh judicial review at intervals of no more than fourteen days. Every involuntarily detained person has the right from the moment of detention to an independent advocate, to communicate with family and legal representation, to know the precise grounds of their detention in plain language, and to challenge their detention at any time.
No person may be detained on mental health grounds as a substitute for criminal proceedings or on the basis of holding beliefs that others find unusual. Ireland’s history of using institutions to disappear inconvenient people is a national shame that this constitution permanently forecloses.