Justin Karter and Zenobia Morrill are research officers for the UN Special Rapporteur
Today, October 10, is World Mental Health Day, and Dainius Pūras, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to health, released an open statement on suicide prevention to mark the day. Two UMass Boston Counseling Psychology PhD candidates, Justin Karter and Zenobia Morrill, contributed to that statement, compiling the background research from which the statement is based.
“I think a takeaway is the UN is making suicide not just a medical issue but a political issue, and looking at how policies—lack of protection for human rights, and lack of access to resources—contributes to rising suicide rates internationally and in high-income countries like the United States,” Karter said.
“States have an obligation to be looking at human rights—to be looking at the social determinants of health,” Morrill said.
Karter and Morrill have served as paid research officers at the UN since August. They have been asked to help collaborate on future statements in between their UMass Boston classes and research.
Next, they are developing a country monitoring tool to provide practical guidance for the next special rapporteur mandate holder. This involves conducting interviews with current and former mandate holders, civil society actors, users/survivors, etc. to build a solid picture about best mental health practices at the national level that are consistent with social determinants and human rights. The toolkit can then be used to help the mandate’s Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) team prepare a more robust country mission plan.
Karter is from Buffalo, New York; Morrill is from McLean, Virginia. They are both fourth-year students in Professor of Counseling and School Psychology Lisa Cosgrove’s lab.