PART 2: How to Bring a Case to the Court the Court to make an assessment of a number of subjective elements. A psychological assessment, carried out by a trained specialist, preferably a psychiatrist, “linking” the applicant’s psychological problems to his or her allegations will assist the Court in its examination and is strongly recommended. Applicants should also refer to the chapter on the establishment of facts in order to see what kind of facts and documents can support the substantiation of an application. The Court’s assessment of the severity of the treatment will take into account all the circumstances of the case such as the duration of the treatment, the physical and mental effects and, in some cases, the sex, age, and state of health of the victim. Consequently, in some cases the Court might consider a particular form of treatment severe enough to cross the severity threshold, where the applicant can show characteristics that make him or her particularly vulnerable to such treatment. Thus in some cases, ill-treatment of a child, pregnant woman, or elderly or infirm person might constitute a breach of Article 3 while the same treatment, when meted out to a healthy adult, might not be sufficient to constitute prohibited ill-treatment.532 If relevant to the case, applicants are therefore advised to call to the attention of the Court, through argument and evidence, any particular characteristic which exacerbates their suffering. Finally, applicants should support their arguments that the treatment in question reaches the required minimum by referring to the Court’s case law in which similar allegations have been examined. This is particularly appropriate for complaints relating to prison conditions and other circumstances where the threshold level of severity might be an issue. 2.2.7 The “Substantial Disadvantage” Criterion (Article 35 § 3b) An amendment to Article 35 (3) (b) of the Convention by Protocol No. 14 allows the Court to reject a case in which “the applicant has not suffered a significant disadvantage, unless respect for human rights as defined in the Convention and the Protocols thereto requires an examination of the application on the merits and provided that no case may be rejected on this ground which has not been duly considered by a domestic tribunal.” This new admissibility criterion introduces the principle de minimis non curat praetor into the Convention machinery533 and may be considered a tool to “save the Court from having to 532 See e.g. Mathew v. the Netherlands, no. 24919/03, 29 September 2005, § 203, where the Court observed that the applicant with health problems was not a person fit to be detained in the conditions of which he complained. 533 Xavier-Baptiste Ruedin, “De minimis non curat the European Court of Human Rights: The Introduction of New Admissibility Criterion (Article 12 of Protocol No. 14)”, in European Human Rights Law Review, vol. 1, 2008, pp. 80–105. 145