Our team has collaborated with members of the Guatemalan Congress to draft and refine the first comprehensive mental health law, integrating feedback from medical and legal professionals affiliated with Stanford’s Human Rights in Trauma Mental Health program. The proposed changes to the law balance human rights with clinical safety by defining safeguards for the use of evidence-based crisis interventions, clarifying informed consent capacity, and preserving crisis hospital care to ensure safe, effective treatment.

This project is advancing on two specific areas of focus; legislative reform through Congress and regulatory and implementation planning with the Ministry of Health. We are supporting the Ministry of Health in responding to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Case 13.524), where Guatemala must demonstrate progress on deinstitutionalization and safeguards for human rights. Together, these efforts aim to shift Guatemala toward a rights-based model of care, addressing key human rights issues and creating a replicable model for mental health law and deinstitutionalization across Latin America. We recognize that other countries in the region have led mental health reform efforts for decades. Our goal is to learn from their experiences, integrate their lessons into Guatemala’s reform process, and establish collaborations that strengthen regional exchange and collective progress. Through this approach, we aim to contribute to the growing body of Latin American evidence on rights-based mental health systems.

Learn more at the following link:

https://med.stanford.edu/psychiatry/special-initiatives/globalmh.html