MDRI Awards & Recognitions

• American Psychiatric Association’s Human Rights Award (2009)
  
  Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) was awarded the APA’s 2009 Human Rights Award, bestowed by the Council on Global Psychiatry, a component of the APA. The Human Rights Award was established in 1990 to recognize individuals and organizations that exemplify the capacity of human beings to protect others from damage related to the professional, scientific, and clinical dimensions of mental health, at the hands of other human beings. Past recipients of the APA Human Rights Award include President Jimmy Carter and Roselyn Carter, Senators Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici, Justice Richard Goldstone and Physicians for Human Rights.
  
  
• Henry B. Betts Award (2008)
  
  Eric Rosenthal, Executive Director of MDRI was awarded the prestigious Henry B. Betts Award by the American Association of People with Disabilities. The Betts Award is named in honor of Henry B. Betts, M.D., a pioneer in the field of rehabilitation medicine who started his career with the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago in 1964 and has devoted himself to improving the quality of life for people with disabilities.

• Thomas J. Dodd Award in International Justice and Human Rights (2007)
  
  The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut awarded MDRI the 2007 Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights Prize. MDRI was awarded for its efforts in advancing the cause of international justice and global human rights.
  
  

Programmatic Accomplishments
Since 1993, MDRI has:

• Investigated and documented human rights abuses in 23 countries throughout Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East;
  
  
• Published reports on human rights conditions of people with mental
  disabilities in Uruguay (1995), Hungary (1997), Russia (1999), Mexico (2000), Kosovo (2002), Peru (2004), Turkey (2005), Romania (2006), Argentina (2007), and Serbia (2007);
  
  
• Achieved worldwide recognition for the rights of people with mental disabilities through the media. MDRI's work has been profiled by The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN International, BBC World Service, ABC News, NBC News, Voice of America, National Public Radio, and hundreds of other papers and television programs around the world; read more. . .