Authorities to Create Centralized Mental Health Database Amid Rights, Stigma Concerns
Georgia’s disputed Parliament adopted laws requiring the Health Ministry to create a centralized database of people with mental health–related conditions, a move critics, including psychologists, warn could become a “tool for control, discrimination and manipulation.”
The amendments, adopted on December 9 as part of a broader legislative package changing the laws on Mental Health and on Weapons, task the Health Ministry to establish by March 1, 2026, a database of people with psychiatric conditions, as well as those diagnosed with alcoholism, drug addiction, and substance abuse, with the involvement of the Interior Ministry.
“In the absence of timely and reliable sources of information, the state is unable to properly ensure the effective functioning of mechanisms aimed at public safety,” the explanatory note states. It adds that this complicates verifying whether a person’s health condition meets legal requirements when issuing firearms licenses, granting the right to carry service weapons, issuing driving licenses, and other similar rights, which it says are associated with “increased risk” and require the holder’s health condition to remain in constant compliance with legislative requirements.
The critics, however, warn that the creation of a centralized mental health database poses serious risks to fundamental rights.
Zurab Sikharulidze, a narcologist and a member of the opposition Federalists party, wrote on Facebook that the amendments would “completely destroy psychiatry and narcology” while “so crudely violating fundamental human rights that it becomes a spectacle.”
“Mental health-related problems must not be a tool of control, discrimination or manipulation,” the Georgian Psychologists’ Trade Union said, stressing that such information belongs to a category of “particularly sensitive data.” The union added that the collection, storage, or dissemination of such data “increases the risk of rights violations, discrimination, and stigmatization.”
The union further warned that centralized databases containing mental health information carry “extremely high risks” and could be used to control citizens or restrict rights in areas such as employment and education.
Under the amended Law on Mental Health, the Health Ministry must develop criteria for entering data into the database, collect relevant information from state and private institutions, and carry out the technical and organizational measures necessary to operate the unified system
The legislative changes are directly linked to firearms regulation, among others. Under the amended Law on Weapons, the Interior Ministry must, by October 1, 2026, verify holders of firearms licenses issued before March 1, 2026, against the centralized database and, “where appropriate grounds exist,” revoke such permits.
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