JEAN-JACQUES GAUTIER NPM SYMPOSIUM 2016 amount to ill-treatment or torture, with the aim of better protecting the rights of persons with disabilities. Monitoring bodies, and NPMs in particular, have a central role to play in protecting the rights of individuals deprived of liberty in psychiatric institutions – a monitoring role increasingly exercised in several regions around the world. Their preventive mandate under the OPCAT, which ensures privileged access to all places of deprivation of liberty - both public and private - (in the broad sense of the definition contained in article 4 of the OPCAT), places them in a unique position to report on the reality of deprivation of liberty and to question it with a view to improving practices. Despite the diversity of the social, political and cultural contexts in which NPMs operate, and the diverging practices pertaining to the treatment of persons with mental disabilities, these bodies face similar challenges in the monitoring of psychiatric institutions, both on fundamental substantive issues and on the methodological approach to be adopted before, during and after the visits. In light of the diverging international standards governing involuntary placement and treatment of persons with mental disabilities, which renders their implementation all the more difficult, NPMs’ main governing principle should be non-discrimination. This principle includes an acknowledgement of the paradigm shift, which assumes that the individual has the capacity for independent decisionmaking. In other words, the move from a system of “substitute” decision-making to a system of “supported” decision-making. At the end of the Symposium, it was concluded that NPMs (and other monitoring bodies) should be encouraged to consider the following issues to better protect persons with mental disabilities and promote alternatives to institutionalisation in favour of life in the community: • check that the treatment is always individualised and question practices (such as the use of seclusion and physical or chemical restraint) that may amount to torture or other forms of illtreatment; • ensure visiting teams are multidisciplinary and made up of healthcare specialists but also non-specialists, in order to benefit both from medical expertise but also from a range of points of view on the methods of treatment observed; 40