Visions Journal

BC's Independent Rights Advice Service for people in involuntary treatment

Sophia Ciavarella

Reprinted from the Involuntary Treatment: Tensions and choices issue of Visions Journal, 2025, 21 (2), pp. 14-17

Naomi was waiting alone in a dark hospital room. It felt late, but there was no clock, and someone had taken her phone. She didn't know where she was. The last few days had been such a blur, she didn't remember what happened. She felt confused and scared.

She heard someone yelling at a woman in the room beside her for "drinking too much water." Naomi was afraid of getting yelled at too. She wasn't going to ask any questions.

Two days later, she was out of the hospital. No one had ever told her where she was or why she was there. No one explained to her that she had rights; she assumed she had none. For years, she hid her mental health problems because going back there felt scarier than anything in her head.*

Unfortunately, stories like the one above are all too common in BC. A 2019 Ombudsperson Office report¹ revealed that less than half of people in involuntary treatment were being notified of their legal rights—including their right to know where they were, why they were there, their right to a lawyer and even their right to challenge their detention. It's a long road towards change—but change has started. As of December 3, 2025, after years of determined advocacy and documentation of rights violations, people in BC who are receiving involuntary treatment have the legal right to access free rights advice at specific moments during the treatment process. To protect this right, a new service has launched to provide this vital rights information. The service, called the Independent Rights Advice Service, or IRAS, exists to educate people in involuntary treatment on their legal rights and how to act on them.

Ask questions, get answers

If you are a person receiving involuntary treatment for mental health or substance use, you are now legally in your rights to get help from an advisor with the rights service. The job of an IRAS rights advisor is to educate you on your rights under the Mental Health Act. But it’s so much more than that.

Rights advisors are independent from mental health facilities and hospitals, their staff or care teams. This means that as an IRAS service user, you can:

• ask advisors questions
• request support to exercise your rights without fear of influence or reprisal
• sit down with an advisor and have a dedicated, person-centred conversation that recognizes how stressful and confusing your experience is
• find out what decision-making power you do still have

Above all, a rights advisor can remind you that, no matter how you feel, you are not alone.

Although IRAS is relatively new (it launched in early 2024) and rights advisors can't provide legal advice, it is a major step forward. Studies of similar services across Canada show that independent rights advice services have broader impacts. They:

• improve quality of life for people in involuntary treatment 
• assist health care systems in addressing anti-racism
• provide more equitable services^2,3,4

Strengthening rights

Several official Mental Health Act forms are changing to reflect patients' new right to advice from IRAS (one of the new forms is printed after this article). The changes mean if you are receiving involuntary treatment, you will be informed of your right to meet with an advisor whenever:

• you are admitted to the facility 
• you are transferred to a different facility
• your medical certificate is renewed
• you are placed on "extended leave" living in community

At each of these points, care teams who are involuntarily detaining a person are legally required to connect them with IRAS if the person chooses. While IRAS is primarily a virtual service for now, we do some in-person meetings and are working on having a greater in-person presence as our numbers and meeting requests grow.

Advice from people who've been there

Many advisors have lived experience of mental health care and detention themselves, making them the perfect people to understand what other people in involuntary treatment are going through. They can ensure service users have their rights respected and no one is silenced or left hidden in the cracks.

Currently 10 rights advisors work across the province. At IRAS, we have carefully chosen and rigorously trained these advisors to do their work in a culturally safe, trauma-informed way.

IRAS is also designed and delivered using a partnership model. This model brings together multiple organizations and stakeholders, including the expertise of people with lived and living experience of involuntary treatment.

To ensure IRAS remains informed by, and accountable to, the lived experience of detention, IRAS is governed by two committees:

• a Lived and Living Experience Leadership Committee, made up of people with experiential expertise of the mental health care system and involuntary treatment 
• a Governance Committee, composed of Indigenous-led organizations and legal partners 

Developed from the ground up 

The idea for the rights service is not new. Most provinces have a similar service. In BC, community organizations, especially Indigenous-led and peer-led organizations, have been documenting human rights abuses in the mental health care system for decades while advocating for an independent rights advice service.^5,6,7

There was even a previous independent rights advice service, but there was no law to ensure people got access to the advice.⁸ While it was a 2022 follow-up⁹ to the original 2019 BC Ombudsperson report¹ that finally pushed the government into action, IRAS wouldn’t have been possible without the long history of people with lived and living experience of involuntary treatment who laid the path forward.

IRAS is now delivered by three affiliates of the Canadian Mental Health Association in close collaboration with Health Justice, which leads training, education and engagement, and the service is funded by BC's Ministry of the Attorney General. IRAS works in tandem with the new legal right to advice, which has been enshrined by an amendment to BC's Mental Health Act.

What's next for rights advice

BC and Canada as a whole have a long way to go when it comes to respecting the rights of people navigating health care systems, addressing the impact of colonization and promoting anti-racism and equitable access to health care. IRAS also has a lot of work to do. We are currently working on ensuring greater access to culturally specific services and resources, and focusing on evaluation to measure our impact on service users and systems. We want to learn and improve.

As we continue to educate and support people in involuntary treatment, we will celebrate the work we've done and use it to motivate future work with passion, reflection and a commitment to ensuring that our service users feel connected, respected and empowered as decision makers in their own health care. As the new provincial manager of IRAS, it is my goal for our service to be a source of hope and security for people at a time in their lives when they rarely feel either.

Get Access to Rights Advice

IRAS is free and available province-wide. Visit irasbc.ca 

• If you are currently detained in a mental health facility: Ask your nurse, social worker or doctor for access to a rights advisor. They will fill out a form. You are allowed to bring a friend, family member or other supporter with you if you’d like.
• If you are on extended leave from a mental health facility in the community: You can book a rights-advice meeting yourself at irasbc.ca 
• If you need help navigating the IRAS website: You can leave a voicemail at 604-681-4070.

*story shared with consent. Naomi is a pseudonym