The World Health Organization's QualityRights initiative represents an exciting shift towards creating mental health services that respect human rights and promote recovery. The initiative is the subject of a recent BJPsych editorial. In this article I challenge previously articulated criticism of QualityRights and suggest that psychiatry has much to gain from promoting rights-based practice.

Psychiatrists have an essential role to play in promoting human rights in mental healthcare. The World Health Organization's QualityRights initiative, in partnership with different stakeholders, is improving the quality of psychiatric care in different countries.

The World Health Organization has developed training material to support its QualityRights Initiative. These documents offer excellent strategies to limit coercion. However, the negative portrayal of psychiatry, the absolute prohibition on involuntary treatment and the apparent acceptance of the criminalisation of individuals with mental illness are causes for concern.

The treatment of mental illness is undergoing a paradigm shift, moving away from involuntary treatments towards rights-based, patient-centred care. However, rates of seclusion and restraint in Ireland are on the rise. The World Health Organisation’s QualityRights initiative aims to remove coercion from the practice of mental health care, in order to concord with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The QualityRights initiative has recently published a training programme, with eight modules designed to be delivered as workshops. Conducting these workshops may reduce coercive practices, and four of the modules may be of particular relevance for Ireland. The ‘Supported decision-making and advance planning’ and the ‘Legal capacity and the right to decide’ modules highlight the need to implement the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act, 2015, while the ‘Freedom from coercion, violence and abuse’ and ‘Strategies to end seclusion and restraint’ modules describe practical alternatives to some current involuntary treatments.