JEAN-JACQUES GAUTIER NPM SYMPOSIUM 2016 and the SPT discussed the role of psychiatrists within the team and the advantages and disadvantages of their presence within visiting teams. Psychiatrists have the benefit of specialised medical knowledge and are able to assess the relevance of the care, the quality of the proposed treatment and can therefore add more legitimacy to the NPM. However, their presence can also be perceived with suspicion by the users as it has strong associations with their experience in the institution. Moreover, it is not necessarily apparent to psychiatrists that their role as members of a human rights monitoring body should prevail over their role as a doctor in the interests of the persons who are deprived of liberty. The psychiatrist’s point of view should therefore be contrasted with that of their non-specialist peers to allow for a discussion within the team before, during and after the visits, and establish a common approach to the monitoring between specialists and non-specialists. “Non-psychiatrists play an essential role to counteract the professional biases of psychiatrists. Non-psychiatrists are more sensitive to the dehumanising effects of some psychiatric institutions and ask sensible questions about patients’ everyday living conditions. They also understand how important private interviews with patients are conducted to probe for possible abuses, even with acutely disturbed, psychotic patients and patients in seclusion and/or physically restrained.” Timothy Harding, Expert-psychiatrist, CPT In practice, several NPMs lack medical expertise in their team. To make up for this, psychiatrists are often included as external experts and only join the NPM team for visits. This offers the aforementioned benefits but also provides an additional challenge: a shared common vision/understanding of the preventive mandate of monitoring that transcends the professional background of each of the members of the visiting team. The discussions led to the conclusion that, while a psychiatrist’s presence in the NPM brings added value, one does not need to be a specialist to evaluate the merit of certain practices and their potential negative impact on human rights. 34