The Mental Disability Advocacy Center (MDAC) is an international human rights organisation founded in Hungary in 2002.

MDAC uses the law to promote equality and social inclusion through strategic litigation, advocacy, research and monitoring and capacity-building.

MDAC's objectives focus on the rights of people with intellectual, learning and psycho-social (mental health) disabilities to be free from abuse, be persons recognised by the law and have access to justice, to live in the community, be educated and to take part in society.

- freedom from ill-treatment: for people with disabilities to be not secluded from the rest of society nor be subjected to physical and chemical restraints, and to be treated only with their consent.

These include creating progressive jurisprudence and law reform, empowering people with disabilities and promoting participatory politics, supported by research.

As a result, it has lobbied for reform of laws on guardianship and the right to be legally recognised as a person in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia.

Stanev v Bulgaria (2012), concerned the long-term placement, torture and ill-treatment of a man diagnosed with a mental illness in a remote care institution by his guardian.

[4][5] This was the first time the Court found a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (prohibition of torture) in a disability case.