{"id":17192,"date":"2025-11-25T18:09:03","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T16:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=17192"},"modified":"2026-10-24T15:03:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T13:03:03","slug":"psychotherapy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/psychotherapy-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Forced Psychiatric Admission: When Treatment Becomes a Weapon in Family Disputes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four years ago, the first chapters of the ordeal of <\/span>Shady Hussein <\/b>(a pseudonym), a man in his thirties from the city of Mansoura, began on a pitch-dark night, when one night in 2021 he was shocked by strangers breaking into the family home. They were three men, with a woman waiting for them downstairs whom he later learned was an intern doctor. They beat him and tied him up; he tried to call the emergency police, and in the meantime his elderly mother woke up in fright. She did not understand what was really happening. They told her that “her son is mentally ill and she must sign the papers for his admission to the psychiatric clinic where they work”, so she complied and signed. After that, they injected him with a sedative so that he would lose consciousness, and took him away to an unknown destination.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Shady came to, he found himself in a strange place surrounded by people he did not know. They told him that he was in an addiction treatment centre and that his family were the ones who had admitted him. Shady soon discovered that his brother had enlisted the help of a friend who works as a supplier of cases to one of the private mental health centres in Mansoura, and had given him the key to the family home so that he could use his connections to rid him of his older brother, who stood as a stumbling block in the way of his marriage to a woman he had met online, and to put an end to family disputes that began after the death of their father in 2020 and Shady’s taking over the management of the family’s property affairs, as he held a general power of attorney from the late father, according to his account.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shady screamed in protest, but his objection brought only more isolation and being forced to take sedatives and psychiatric medication. He tells Zawia3: “I spent 15 days detained without a charge or a medical diagnosis, and I had never used any narcotic substance or even smoked. I was only paying the price of a family conflict, a network of interests, and a legal loophole that allowed my detention. I tried to contact my mother by phone, but my request was refused, with them claiming that this is a right for those who enter voluntarily, not for those who are admitted compulsorily. One of the doctors told me that my case was merely a family dispute and that my release would be decided after meeting the director of the centre, but this meeting never took place.” <\/span><\/p>\n

During his time in the clinic, Shady learned that there is a law for psychiatric patients in Egypt that guarantees them basic rights, among them contacting their families, objecting to compulsory admission decisions and receiving a copy of their medical file, but none of this happened. Meanwhile, the psychiatrists wrote a report claiming that he suffers from intermittent <\/span>explosive disorder<\/span><\/a> (IED), a mental condition characterised by recurrent episodes of aggressive behaviour or excessive anger that is disproportionate to the situation that provoked it (it is classified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) among impulse-control disorders, its symptoms include fits of shouting, threats, physical assaults and destruction of property, and its treatment includes antidepressants, mood stabilisers and psychotherapy to control these impulses), and the centre sent a sham report to the Regional Council for Mental Health confirming that he warranted compulsory admission, without the delegated doctor even seeing him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three days after his detention, his cousin and his lawyer tracked down the clinic holding him and tried to intervene to secure his release. The obstacle, however, was that his mother, under the pressure of the situation, had signed his admission papers without understanding their details, while the centre had refused to release him, in collusion with his brother, who got married one day after Shady was abducted from the family home. When his mother later tried to get him out, she was told that Shady posed a danger to himself and to others, so the clinic continued taking money from his brother. When his lawyer filed a grievance, the Regional Council for Mental Health informed him that a three-member committee had determined that his condition required compulsory treatment, even though he had not actually been examined by an independent doctor; rather, the assessment relied solely on the private centre’s papers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amid all this, his mother stood bewildered, having signed, in moments of panic, papers whose contents she had not read, becoming a witness and an adversary at the same time, between her older son, who was struggling to prove his innocence, and her younger son, who wanted to get on with his life with his new wife. “When my mother went to the clinic, they did not even allow her to meet me, and they told her that I was ill and a danger to myself and to others. When the lawyer came and looked into the situation, he contacted my mother, and this time they allowed her to meet me, but she asked for my release and they refused,” Shady recounts.<\/span><\/p>\n

After 15 days, he was allowed to leave the centre, and Shady then began a legal battle to try to restore his reputation. He requested his medical file and filed reports with the Public Prosecution, and he soon discovered that every measure taken against him had been tailored to keep him behind closed doors, and that he was the victim of loopholes in the law that was designed to protect patients, loopholes that some private centres exploit.<\/span><\/p>\n

He says: “They released me and said that I had to follow up with them in later visits, on the pretext of treatment. They made me sign a form that is given to the patient upon admission and that sets out his rights under the Psychiatric Patient Care Law, and then I requested a copy of my medical file.” After reading the law, he decided to press ahead with the complaint and litigation procedures, and he submitted a report to the Public Prosecution, but he was shocked that many lawyers were not fully aware of the new mental health law, and that the fact that he had previously been admitted to a psychiatric centre made the prosecution view him with suspicion, especially since medical terms such as intermittent explosive disorder were not understood by its members, as he puts it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shady reveals that he demanded to be referred to forensic medicine or to any government hospital, but his request was refused, and after lengthy procedures he was treated as a “defendant”, even though he was in the position of the “victim”. He explains that the Public Prosecution handled his case according to the procedures reserved for defendants only, as contact was made with the Forensic Psychiatry Department through the International Cooperation Office, which he considered a complicated and unjustified procedure in his case.<\/span><\/p>\n

Zawia3 spoke with the lawyer handling Shady Hussein’s case, who confirms to us that his client was subjected to a new attempt to have him committed as a psychiatric patient at the Abbasiya Mental Health Hospital, after a doctor wrote a report stating that he suffers from severe psychotic symptoms without examining him, but he escaped committal because the hospital director was absent that day, so the procedure was postponed. He adds that when he later brought the matter before the Public Prosecution, he found a memorandum indicating that Shady was “ill” based on the private centre’s papers and recommending his committal to a psychiatric institution, which he considered a falsification of the facts, stressing that the International Cooperation Office, for its part, did not grasp his status as a victim and treated him as a defendant.<\/span><\/p>\n

He reveals that after a year the case was shelved, before the Appeals Prosecution reopened it, and Shady was again referred to forensic psychiatry. He points out that the doctor who wrote the first report claimed before the prosecution that he had seen him “agitated and screaming”, which Shady denied, stressing that there are witnesses to the contrary. He shows that there was a conflict of interest and corruption in the case, as it emerged that the director of the private centre where he was detained was at the same time the director of the Patients’ Rights Care Department at Regional Council number three, and also held a position at the National Council for Mental Health, which he considers a network of interests that influenced the course of the case.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, Shady is not seeking revenge so much as recognition that he was wronged and a guarantee that no one else goes through what he went through. He says: “At first, I only wanted to get out of the clinic. Now I want people to know that what happened to me could happen to them at any moment.”<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Law No. 71 of 2009 on the Care of Psychiatric Patients, anyone who admits a patient to a mental health facility through deception, such as detaining a person as mentally ill in places or circumstances other than those stipulated by the law, or falsely reporting to the competent authorities with ill intent, is considered to have committed a violation that warrants punishment. Likewise, the law<\/a> punishes the perpetrator of these acts with imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months and a fine not exceeding three thousand pounds, or with one of these two penalties.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>The Shortage of Psychiatric Medications in Egypt: A Daily Struggle for Survival<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

The Psychiatric Patient Care Law Opens the Door to Manipulation<\/b><\/h1>\n

Some families exploit loopholes in the application of the Psychiatric Patient Care Law and weak oversight of private clinics, particularly unlicensed ones, to forcibly detain their relatives, often for financial motives linked to inheritance, while a network of interests between doctors, clinics and regulatory bodies provides an umbrella that legitimises this violation and turns some private psychiatric clinics and addiction treatment centres, particularly unlicensed ones, into tools of blackmail and control, according to sources who spoke to Zawia3.<\/span><\/p>\n

Also in the city of Mansoura, <\/span>Mohamed Hassan<\/b> (a pseudonym), a young man in his early thirties, lived through a harsh experience that changed the course of his life, when he found himself detained behind the doors of a private centre for mental health and addiction treatment because of family disputes with his mother over inheritance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mohamed had married and had a child, but his marriage did not last long, because his mother, who was born in 1959 and holds a general power of attorney from her four children (two sons and two daughters), was not pleased with his wife’s lifestyle and put pressure on him to force him to divorce her. After the separation, the dispute between the two sides intensified over the inheritance and the question of the custody home, as the mother refused to let his ex-wife live in the disputed apartment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Events took a harsher turn when his mother resorted to a cruel ruse: she summoned people who work at a private clinic to come for him, and in broad daylight, in full view of neighbours and passers-by, he was carried off with his hands and feet bound while he screamed for help, in an incident documented by surveillance cameras, whose recordings Zawia3 has viewed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The mother repeated the act of having her son thrown into the centre three times, so that he would stop demanding his right to the inheritance. When his other brother objected and joined his brother in the demand, he received a similar threat from the mother, and was then himself forcibly admitted to the clinic, but unlike his brother, the drug test sample taken from him came back positive for hashish use. In the end, the two brothers found no solution other than to stop claiming the inheritance, and Mohamed was forced to draw up a lease contract for the apartment for his ex-wife to escape this humiliating predicament, according to the account of the brothers’ lawyer.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lawyer <\/span>Ahmed Bayoumi Abdel Karim<\/b> explains that the private mental health system is full of loopholes, and “there is no real oversight of private centres; dozens of unlicensed clinics are closed every year, but others continue to operate without accountability, medical reports are fabricated, and medication is dispensed haphazardly to keep the detainee in a state of confusion and drowsiness. Worst of all, some doctors collude to protect one another from any legal accountability, making it difficult to prove any error or abuse.”<\/span><\/p>\n

In his conversation with us, he shows that the current law, No. 71 of 2009 on the Care of Psychiatric Patients, opens the door to manipulation, since it is enough for a first-degree relative to sign a report claiming that the patient is “in a state of agitation” for the admission to be registered under the “emergency” clause, after which he is forcibly detained. Moreover, some prescribed psychiatric medications, such as “Depakine”, are administered routinely and have serious side effects on mood and behaviour, which entrenches the false image of the patient.<\/span><\/p>\n

He says: “The whole thing is built on sham reports, and one of the most serious loopholes is the conflict of interest. Psychiatrists working in the regional mental health councils, which are the regulatory body, move straight after retirement to work in private clinics, and so relationships of collegiality and shared interests make oversight a formality. There is a closed network that protects itself, since the doctor who used to investigate the centres’ violations, you find him the next day employed by one of them.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Law No. 71 of 2009, as the lawyer sees it, “is not so much a law for the care of psychiatric patients as it is a law to protect the doctor. There is no mechanism to hold doctors accountable for grave abuses, and no real guarantee of patients’ rights, and whoever comes out of the experience often comes out broken, having lost trust, and sometimes subject to the control of the party that caused his detention.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The suffering that both Shady and Mohamed lived through reveals a legal loophole and a human tragedy, as compulsory admission to psychiatric clinics and addiction treatment centres can turn into a weapon for settling family scores, so that a medical report becomes the key to deprivation of both liberty and inheritance, in the absence of effective oversight and under the umbrella of a law that leaves the weakest without protection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Abdel Karim stresses that the problem lies not in the texts alone, but in the application of Law No. 71 of 2009 and in institutional corruption within the health system, as awareness of the rights of psychiatric patients is absent among bodies that are supposed to be responsible for oversight, such as members of the prosecution, which leaves the field open for the law to be exploited at the expense of individuals’ rights and human dignity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Article (14) of Law<\/a> No. 71 of 2009 stipulates that a doctor specialised in psychiatry at one of the mental health facilities provided for in this law may, in the cases referred to in the preceding article and in accordance with the provisions set out therein, admit a patient against his will, provided that he notifies the police within 24 hours, on the basis of a written request submitted to the facility by any of the following persons: one of the patient’s relatives up to the second degree, an official of the administrative authority in the area, one of the judicial officers, the director of one of the mental health facilities, a social worker, or a doctor not specialised in psychiatry, provided that the request states the applicant’s relationship to the patient and sets out the reasons for requesting admission, and that it is accompanied by a certificate issued by a doctor who is not related by blood or marriage up to the second degree to the patient or to the director of the facility, and the matter is referred to the Public Prosecution within a period not exceeding twenty-four hours for the necessary action to be taken.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>Sharp Increases in Psychotherapy Fees of up to 900%: Is Egypt Backtracking on Free Mental Health Care?<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Reports the Judiciary Does Not Recognise <\/b><\/h1>\n

For his part, Dr <\/span>Badr Abbas<\/b>, a consultant in neurology, psychiatry and addiction treatment, explains that reports issued by any psychiatric clinic, whether governmental or private, licensed and subject to the supervision of the National Council for Mental Health, are no more than documents submitted by a lawyer before the court, and the judge may or may not rely on them. If the judge doubts the mental capacity of the plaintiff or the defendant, he refers the case to the Forensic Medicine Department of the National Council for Mental Health, located in Abbasiya, so that a thorough examination is carried out by a committee of three to five consultant psychiatrists qualified in forensic psychiatry, over a period of up to fifteen days, a period that can be renewed for a similar duration and may reach forty-five days or more. The committee may hear from the patient’s relatives and carry out the necessary examinations until it reaches a final decision or report, which is submitted to the Forensic Medicine Department.<\/span><\/p>\n

He tells Zawia3: “The court reviews the report, which for the judge is an advisory report and not a binding one; the final decision or final ruling is subject to the judge’s conscience. This applies even if the reports are issued by government bodies, because the final reference is not the forensic report alone, but the judge’s conscience, and any ruling issued otherwise, and if the judge does not adopt the opinion of the forensic report, the ruling must be overturned at the first hearing. The law does not allow the private clinic to issue reports about the patient himself as long as he enjoys his mental capacity, and no one, whether his family or his wife, has the right to obtain them by force of law, except where there is a guardianship decision over someone under eighteen years of age, in which case his guardian is responsible under Article 12 of the law, or where there is an interdiction case or a guardianship over the management of funds. If an interdiction ruling is issued against a person, even if he is sixty-one or seventy years old, he has the right to obtain a medical report.”<\/span><\/p>\n

He explains that compulsory admission is provided for in Article 13 of the Psychiatric Patient Care Law, under which a psychiatrist may admit a patient by force if he poses a danger to himself or to others, or if his presence outside the facility portends a severe and imminent deterioration in his health. This is followed by a complementary procedure, in which an independent doctor, who has no family ties to the owner of the facility or to the patient, carries out within 48 hours what is called an independent psychiatric assessment. He points out that there was a protocol requiring the family to call an ambulance to bring the patient in coordination with the nearest psychiatric hospital, but we have not seen this system applied; it has not been activated, so responsibility usually remains on the shoulders of the families, who transport the patient themselves. There are major hospitals that have their own vehicles equipped with medical and nursing staff and security personnel, who take charge of transporting the patient officially, and within 24 hours a notification is sent to the National Council for Mental Health, which delegates an independent doctor within 48 to 72 hours to assess the case and approve or reject the procedure.<\/span><\/p>\n

He notes that licensed hospitals are subject to inspection by the National Council, which verifies the soundness of forms and procedures, and that any violation exposes the hospital to accountability. As for the report of the National Council and the Forensic Medicine Department, its opinion remains advisory and not binding on the judge, whose conscience remains the decisive factor. Independent committees have been called upon, as happened in the case of a famous singer in 2023, when the judge did not adopt the Council’s report and referred the case to a university committee, which confirmed that he suffered from a psychotic disorder and ordered him to be committed to the forensic medicine department in Abbasiya until he recovered.<\/span><\/p>\n

He adds: “The law stipulates that the authority to admit a patient does not belong to his family; their role is limited to presenting the symptoms to the competent psychiatrist, who takes the decision. As for cases of detention of minors, evidence may be submitted in a guardianship case, as Article 71 of 2009 indicated. And certainly, any psychiatric hospital that issues a report is a licensed facility; if the hospital is unlicensed, it will not issue a report in the first place, because by doing so it would be in breach of the law and would expose itself to accountability.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The psychiatric consultant concludes his statements to us by stressing the need to study each case individually, warning against generalisation, since a patient may appear normal in his dealings while being in the grip of dangerous delusional thoughts. He also stresses the importance of consulting Law 71 and its executive regulations, especially with regard to the rights of psychiatric patients and admission procedures, in order to understand the dimensions of the issue more deeply.<\/span><\/p>\n

Article 13 of Law No. 71 of 2009 stipulates that a psychiatric patient may not be compulsorily admitted to a mental health facility except after a new psychiatric medical assessment by a doctor other than the first, on condition that there is a severe mental illness requiring this in two cases: the likelihood of an imminent deterioration in the patient’s condition, or the existence of a serious and imminent threat to his safety or the safety of others. The Monitoring and Evaluation Committee, the director of the facility and the Public Prosecution must be notified within 24 and 48 hours respectively, and a report on the case must be prepared.<\/p>\n

The conditions for compulsory admission include carrying out a new psychiatric medical assessment independent of the first assessment that led to the admission decision. The article specifies two medical conditions in the case of compulsory admission: the presence of clear signs of a severe mental illness threatening an imminent deterioration in the patient’s health or mental condition, or the appearance of symptoms of the illness that represent a serious and imminent threat to the safety, health or life of the patient himself or the lives of others. The patient must be refusing admission to the treatment facility, and the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee and the director of the health facility must be notified within 24 hours of his admission, a report must be prepared that includes an initial assessment of the patient’s condition, and the matter must be referred to the Public Prosecution within 48 hours for the necessary action to be taken.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>The Collapse of Addiction Treatment in Egypt: The Methadone Crisis Exposes the Flaws of Harm Reduction Units<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Weak Oversight of Private Centres <\/b><\/h1>\n

Psychiatric patients are admitted to mental health and addiction treatment facilities through one of three main routes: voluntary admission, compulsory admission and admission by force of law, each of which is subject to clear conditions set out in the Psychiatric Patient Care Law No. 71 of 2009. Voluntary admission takes place by the patient’s own will, while compulsory admission is permitted only if the person poses an imminent danger to society or to himself, such as having suicidal or aggressive tendencies, provided that this is done on the basis of a medical report approved by an official government body, and not on the basis of the family’s wishes alone, according to Dr <\/span>Ayman Attia<\/b>, a medical legal adviser specialising in professional ethics.<\/span><\/p>\n

Attia stresses that the law did not leave the definition of a psychiatric patient open-ended, but distinguished between different medical conditions: there is the aggressive patient who may pose a threat to others, there is the one who is a danger only to himself, such as suicide attempts resulting from depression, and there are other mental illnesses that pose no direct danger. He points out that a large proportion of people, ranging between 60% and 70%, may suffer to varying degrees from mental disorders, but that this does not mean describing everyone as mentally ill or disturbed.<\/span><\/p>\n

He tells Zawia3: “Any person who is maliciously claimed to be mentally ill can go to a specialised government hospital, such as Abbasiya, and obtain an official report proving his mental and psychological soundness. He can even sometimes resort to indirect routes, such as requesting a medical certificate stating that he is fit to work in a particular job, which serves as proof of his soundness. This legal path is the basic guarantee for confronting inaccurate or misleading reports issued by some private clinics, which, incidentally, the judiciary does not recognise.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Attia shows that the issuing by any unlicensed private centre or clinic of reports stating that healthy people are ill constitutes a flagrant violation of the law, pointing out that the mental health sector in Egypt is one of the most dangerous and sensitive fields, given the possibility of exploiting it in criminal cases by claiming insanity to escape punishment.<\/span><\/p>\n

He adds: “Oversight of these centres is weak; their management is held to account only if someone submits an official complaint, following which bodies such as the Public Prosecution or the National Council for Mental Health intervene. The Ministries of Interior and Health also frequently raid unlicensed clinics and centres, pointing to the recent closure of 17 centres in Alexandria and 13 others in Giza. <\/span><\/p>\n

The expert stresses that Egyptian law has emphasised the rights of psychiatric patients, including the confidentiality of their data, their right to see their reports, and the impermissibility of detaining or treating them without a clear medical justification and an official document, and it has also stipulated penalties of up to imprisonment and fines in the event of violations of these rules.<\/span><\/p>\n

Article (24) of the Psychiatric Patient Care Law No. 71 of 2009 stipulates that, in the event that a decision is issued by the Public Prosecution or a court ruling is issued to place one of the defendants in a mental health facility for examination, the Regional Council for Mental Health forms a three-member committee of psychiatrists to assess the mental condition of the committed person and the extent of the danger he poses, within one week of the issuance of the decision or ruling. The judicial authority must be informed of its decision on the condition of the committed person within one week of the date of issuance of the decision, within the period specified by the decision of the judicial authority, and it may request additional time if necessary, provided that the report includes a statement of whether the defendant was suffering from a mental illness at the time of committing the crime in terms of the extent to which awareness or free choice was present, his mental condition at the time of the examination, and the proposed treatment plan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span>Mahmoud Fouad<\/b>, head of the Right to Medicine Association and a former board member of the Khanka Mental Health Hospital, explains that the major government mental health and addiction treatment hospitals affiliated with the General Secretariat of Mental Health, such as Khanka and Abbasiya, include a special section for those convicted in criminal cases, known as the “committed persons’ ward”, which holds around a hundred or more patients against whom court rulings have been issued, and who are placed under observation for periods that may extend from one to two years. Their cases are subject to periodic review by joint committees that include the Ministries of Justice and Health and the General Council for Mental Health, to assess their response to treatment or to establish that they suffer from incurable chronic illnesses. He stresses that this section is under heavy guard by the Ministry of Interior, and entry to it is permitted only with a security permit; even the hospital director cannot enter it without the permission of the officer in charge.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fouad adds, in his conversation with Zawia3, that there is another section dedicated to convicts, located in the furthest part of the hospital and fully under the jurisdiction of the Ministries of Justice and Interior, while the Ministry of Health’s involvement is limited to a periodic medical examination every three or six months. He explains that the belief held by some that a judge’s ruling to commit a defendant to a mental hospital means that he will be released after treatment is incorrect, since the convicted person continues to serve his full sentence inside the hospital if necessary, and even if his condition improves, he is returned to prison to complete the remaining term.<\/span><\/p>\n

He says: “The real problem appears in malicious family disputes, as some families may seek to exploit the loopholes in the law to exclude one of their members from the inheritance or to evade criminal responsibility by having him admitted to a psychiatric clinic and manipulating the medical reports. This mostly happens in major cases involving families with social influence, where influence and corruption are used to affect the course of the cases.”<\/span><\/p>\n

He adds: “The judiciary does not at all recognise reports issued by private hospitals, even in ordinary medical cases, as judges prefer to refer the patient to an official university hospital to ensure the neutrality of the report and the accountability of those responsible for it in the event of manipulation.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding private clinics, Fouad points out that these institutions suffer from major problems due to the absence of clear treatment protocols, especially in the field of addiction treatment, explaining that many of them operate with nominal licences by renting doctors’ names in exchange for monthly sums of money, while staff run the centre in unprofessional ways, sometimes going as far as tying patients to beds and giving them sleeping pills or sedatives in high doses to keep them under control, which causes serious physical and psychological harm.<\/span><\/p>\n

He stresses that some of these clinics do not comply with the compulsory admission procedures stipulated in the law, which require the filing of a police report proving that the patient poses a danger to himself or to society before he is admitted to hospital. He considers that any admission carried out without this step lacks legitimacy and reflects gaps in the oversight of the private sector, pointing out that society aggravates the problem through the social stigma associated with mental illness, which doubles patients’ isolation and their deprivation of their natural rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>The Methadone Crisis: What Explains the Appearance of Ketamine in the Blood of Harm Reduction Patients?<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Circumventing the Law Is a Violation of Human Rights <\/b><\/h1>\n

Compulsory admission to psychiatric clinics must be carried out in accordance with the Psychiatric Patient Care Law, since any breach of these rules constitutes a flagrant violation of human rights, as the law is the sole reference in such cases, and the absence of its proper application opens the door to illegal practices that infringe on patients’ dignity and basic rights, according to Dr <\/span>Alaa Ghannam<\/b>, head of the Right to Health Unit at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

He explains to Zawia3 that the medical reports issued by doctors are the basis on which the assessment of a mental condition is built, since there is no such thing as absolutely “proving” or “not proving” that a person is psychologically sound, given that any person may go through mental disorders at different periods and then recover from them; therefore, the approved medical report is the actual reference before judicial bodies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ghannam points out that the core of the problem lies in the absence of quality and strict oversight of psychiatric clinics and centres, since the commitment of these facilities to professional standards and the oversight of the body responsible for accrediting them are sufficient to ensure that detention procedures take place within the framework of the law and not outside it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr <\/span>Ayman Sabae<\/b>, a researcher on right-to-health issues, agrees with him that any admission of a psychiatric patient or an addiction patient, whether voluntary or compulsory, to any mental health facility, whether governmental, private or an addiction treatment centre, must take place in accordance with the provisions of the Psychiatric Patient Care Law No. 71 of 2009 and its amendments under Law No. 210 of 2020. <\/span><\/p>\n

He stresses to Zawia3 that any breach or violation of a patient’s rights in contravention of the law and its executive regulations allows the aggrieved party to submit a complaint to the National Council for Mental Health, a government body established under Decree No. 104 of 2010 to apply the law and monitor its implementation.<\/span><\/p>\n

He explains that the Council investigates the complaints submitted, and if they are proven to be valid, it takes immediate measures against the violating facility, which may go as far as closing the clinic or the addiction treatment centre. He adds that if the facility is unlicensed and has compulsorily admitted the patient or the aggrieved person, the legal route available to him is to go to the Public Prosecution and file a lawsuit to hold those responsible for this violation to account.<\/span><\/p>\n

The stories of Shady and Mohamed, together with dozens of similar cases, show how Law No. 71 of 2009 has turned from an umbrella that is supposed to protect psychiatric patients and guarantee their rights into a loophole exploited to settle family or financial scores, amid weak oversight of private centres and conflicts of interest within the system. And while experts believe that the law needs careful review and strict activation of its oversight mechanisms, the human stories remain a testimony to the suffering of people who have been stripped of their freedom and basic rights under the banner of “treatment”.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some families exploit loopholes in the application of the Psychiatric Patient Care Law and weak oversight of private clinics, particularly unlicensed ones, to forcibly detain their relatives, often for financial motives linked to inheritance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":19418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410,413],"tags":[],"kateb":[1550],"class_list":["post-17192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investigations-en","category-society-en","kateb-aya-yasser"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/forced-psychiatric-admission-2025.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17192"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24047,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17192\/revisions\/24047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17192"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=17192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}