RIGHTCARE-PR: Reporting guidelines for human rights in child and adolescent psychiatry

Historically, global mental health has struggled between an evidence based biomedical model and a rights-based approach focusing on user perspectives. A particularly problematic global mental health challenge is the use of restraints in psychiatry, highly regulated but controversial and risky, often deemed incompatible with human rights. Despite calls for an absolute ban, inconsistent terms, definitions, and reporting requirements complicate an accurate understanding. Effective research reporting in light of human rights is crucial for knowledge dissemination and ethical integrity.

This paper aims to provide reporting guidance for the neglected area of restraints in child inpatient psychiatric care, integrating scientific evidence and human rights to enhance mental health service quality.

This study builds upon a previous literature review by Pértega and Holmberg (2023) on child restraints in psychiatric settings that found a lack of human rights considerations in scientific literature in four domains: study context, stakeholders, restraint phenomena, and regulations. Relevance for reporting on these items were consulted through a Delphi process involving international experts from law, psychiatry, and social sciences, providing a comparative perspective on legal and psychiatric practices to refine the guidelines.

To ensure evidence-based mental health interventions align with human rights principles, this paper proposes reporting standards that integrate human rights into research on child psychiatric care restraints. The RIGHTCARE-PR guidelines consist of 14 items across four domains, enhancing the clarity and comprehensiveness of research reporting. These guidelines provide a robust and practical tool for researchers to improve the quality and ethical integrity of psychiatric research, benefiting authors, editors, reviewers, and readers.