Human Rights Commission: "Prejudging self-harm or harm to others by hospitalized patients and isolating or restraining them... constitutes human rights violations"

National Human Rights Commission of Korea building. Photo by National Human Rights Commission

[Asia Economy Reporter Seongpil Cho] The National Human Rights Commission of Korea has ruled that excessively restraining and isolating patients hospitalized for mental illness based on presumptions of self-harm or harm to others constitutes a violation of constitutional fundamental rights.

On the 16th, the Human Rights Commission recommended that the director of Hospital A, the respondent, implement restraint and isolation only within the minimum necessary scope for treatment purposes according to relevant laws and provide related human rights education to affiliated staff. The commission also advised the head of the local government overseeing the hospital to strengthen guidance and supervision of mental health institutions in the jurisdiction to prevent recurrence of similar cases. Earlier, in February last year, the commission received a complaint alleging that Hospital A was infringing on patients' rights by excessively restraining and isolating a patient admitted after an extreme suicide attempt and forcing the patient to relieve themselves in an isolation room equipped with closed-circuit television (CCTV).

Hospital A argued that the patient had to be isolated in the room until the COVID-19 test results were available and that the measure was unavoidable due to the patient's emotional instability and risk of self-harm or harm to others. The Human Rights Commission partially accepted this claim but judged that restraining the patient without sufficiently explaining the grounds and reasons for isolation violated the patient's physical freedom. Furthermore, isolating the patient in a CCTV-monitored room, forcing them to relieve themselves in a plastic trash bin without any privacy screens, and having them eat in the same place for over 27 hours without cleaning the excrement was deemed not only a violation of the "Guidelines for Infectious Disease Prevention" but also an infringement of the patient's constitutional right to dignity.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.