a A ground-breaking report exploring the potential for recognizing the harm people experience in the mental health system has been published. Reports are visually stunning and accessible. Website, complete report (87 pages) Easy to understand English version (16 pages). The report has already been viewed by more than 5,000 people and cited by Peru’s mission to the United Nations.
People experience a variety of harms in the mental health system. These include historical practices such as insulin-induced comas and lobotomies, the life-shortening physical health effects of (often forced) psychotropic drugs, a lack of sexual safety in inpatient wards, and bodily autonomy. It is very easy to name things like sexual violation. Particularly from community organizing and other intellectually generative spaces like mad studies, there are (for example) various forms of neglect, systemic racism, subtle forms of institutionalization, and neurodivergent mind-body dynamics. An increasingly nuanced vocabulary is also emerging to describe things like impact. microaggression, Epistemic violence, sanism, and structural violence.
Many people who have experienced harm in the mental health system do not have their experiences witnessed and affirmed, including opportunities for collective meaning-making. The harms being experienced in the mental health system are also not fully disclosed to the wider community. Outside of our own networks, many people in the broader community believe that the mental health system is beneficial and provides much-needed treatment, care and support.How can we make visible the harms of our mental health systems? And what forms of recognition and redress can we seek? Something never happened before: lived experience led to justice and restoration. The project sought to address such questions.
This project was born in a specific geographical and historical context. Between 2018 and 2021, a Royal Commission was convened to investigate the mental health system in the Australian state of Victoria. A Royal Commission is a very high-level, well-resourced process with full state authorization to investigate identified social problems. Before preparing the report, the commissioners consulted with identified experts, held public hearings, and solicited submissions from the public. Multiple reportsthe Victorian Mental Health System concluded: fail catastrophically and need conversion. Their report detailed 63 specific recommendations, all of which the Victorian Government agreed to implement.
“What happened next?” Still unfolding. There is a tremendous amount of work being done, including the creation of new organizations and the rapid expansion of the lived experience workforce. But the potential for change is likely structurally blocked. disappointment rear disappointmentand Return to status quo. There are some hopeful threads. Living experience type residential service and a legally mandated opt-out advocacy service operated by. Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA)a government-funded organization; Demonstrated exemplary practices that support consumer rights, dignity and autonomy.. An entire Lived Experience department was created within the government’s mental health bureaucracy, including the appointment of Mary O’Hagan, a prominent figure in the international consumer/survivor movement, as Executive Director. Mary previously worked on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) as part of the New Zealand Delegation to the United Nations, and co-founded and led PeerZone (a peer-led alternative support structure for people experiencing hardship). I was going. Leading role in the emergence of crazy thinking (e.g. her memoirs) madness made me & 2023 chapter Routledge’s Madness Research Handbook). Mary also supported me personally while I was in extreme condition. She was the keynote speaker at the PeerZone event. The way she stayed with me was the epitome of mutual aid and helped me get through extreme situations outside of the cancerous mental health system. placed under collective protection. Systemic change takes time and is still in its early stages post-Royal Commission, with a lot of potential.
However, the Royal Commission focused on improve the system, rather than directly investigating the harms experienced by those who use (or are exposed to) the system. So our local consumer/survivor organization VMIACproposed a project focusing on, and subsequently received funding from the Government’s Department of Mental Health’s Lived Experiences Unit. harm The state of the mental health system and possible forms of recognition and reparation. This work was led and managed by Simon Cattell, a local human rights advocate and consultant with a passion for accountability processes. Simon gathered a group of his ten “comrades” (as he affectionately calls us). Seven of them have direct lived experience of the mental health system and three have lived experience of the mental health system as family members/relatives/carers. We were recruited through a variety of methods, including local consumer registries and carer registries. Simon added two reference group facilitators (one consumer and one caregiver) to increase safety for group members. Power was consistently decentralized (so, for example, I’m writing this blog, and I’m one of many co-authors, and we all share various (I have stepped up at this point).
Although initiated by a local consumer/survivor’s organization, family/relative/carer participation has been a very important element in this project, as well as a complex and sometimes very painful process. was. One of the most valuable (surviving) members of the group expressed concerns about the stark difference between these two positions, especially that of her family, and left the project. do not have It is a place of care and support, but also a place of most painful harm. This group explored our differences and worked with integrity, but we chose to remain united and work together despite painful rifts, misunderstandings, and differences. Although we wholeheartedly respected this member of the group’s decision to leave, this was a profound experience for many members of the group. Those coming from a “caregiver perspective” (as it is commonly expressed in our context) value: direct lived experience was necessarily at the heart of this effort and could not be obscured by family/relative/carer experiences, but rather the ‘consumer perspective’ (as commonly expressed in our context). people from ) respected kinship ties, which are very important to consumers. We respect both specificity and interconnectedness, considering the specific impact on families/relatives/carers as well as on many people. There was also a clear commitment within the group to keep children’s experiences in mind, as children’s voices are often structurally absent from discussions about mental health.In the Aotearoa/New Zealand context (where some group members were involved), a wide range of Māori whānau It is used to embrace family, relatives, community, and loved ones. In the context of open dialogue (involving other group members), the term “network” is similarly used, but its cultural lineage is less detailed. Together, we shared stories about how the mental health system not only affects us as individuals, but also our relationships, our relationships. whanaurelatives, networks, acquaintances, partners, children, parents, and other loved ones.
A second member of the group also decided to leave the process for various reasons and remain connected to the project group. As an Indigenous man, he spoke about the inseparability of Indigenous individuals and communities, explaining that there is no point in reacting to Indigenous individuals who are isolated from their communities. In withdrawing from this project, he expressed serious concerns about the harm that Indigenous peoples experience after colonization, and that the approach we were exploring did not even address this colonial legacy. I insisted that I couldn’t. Again, the group engaged deeply with this analysis, recognizing that grappling with the effects of colonization is ongoing and fundamental to settler colonial societies. These critiques coexist with previous works and are, by necessity, an ongoing collective conversation.
This process was done with a spirit of stewardship. We did this work in relation to (and responsibility for) the broader community. Simon interviewed dozens of people with relevant expertise, including legal scholars, Indigenous leaders, disability rights advocates, and people involved in restorative justice processes. Simon reported what he heard to the group and discussed it. The resulting co-authored report is Coming Soon: Justice and Restoration Based on Lived Experience, (beautifully illustrated by Lisette Muratore) illustrates our collective discoveries and thinking. A community event was recently held to share this work with his VMIAC community who initiated the project. This work is now available to the broader community (including readers of Mad in America) as a (hopefully) generative collective resource.
Specifically, we propose two processes regarding the report’s findings. First, there are organizational structures for truth-telling, intentionally inviting and listening to people’s stories of harm, and second, formal acknowledgment of these harms (apologies). We cannot accept an apology that is not preceded by a robust, accountable, and comprehensive process for truth-telling, or non-repetitive, is pointless and may cause further harm. The specific organizational structure we have identified as best suited to accomplish this task (not yet established at the time of writing) is: Mental Health and Welfare Committee. However, subsequent developments in our local context make the way forward seem less clear. We collectively grapple with our own “what next?” questions.
Other possibilities we considered include individual reparations, collective reparations (such as funding peer-led crisis services or similar community-led alternatives), and symbolic recognition (where the most heinous victims A plaque commemorating the location was listed. These were not rejected outright, but were considered to be of lower priority (and more ethically complex). Our report is not intended to be the final word, but rather a contribution to the ongoing collective conversation.
We were a small group of a dozen or so humans living on a sparsely populated continent in the geographic South. Most of us live and work in Wurundjeri Nation (the traditional custodians of the land known as Melbourne under settler colonialism), but we live and work in the Wurundjeri Nation (traditional custodians of the land known as Melbourne under settler colonialism), but we live and work in the Wurundjeri Nation (traditional custodians of the land known as Melbourne under settler colonialism), but we live and work in the Wurundjeri Nation (the traditional custodians of the land known as Melbourne under settler colonialism), but we live and work in the Wurundjeri Nation (traditional custodians of the land known as Melbourne under settler colonialism), but we live and work in the Wurundjeri Nation (traditional custodians of the land known as Melbourne under settler colonialism), but we live and work in the Wurundjeri Nation (traditional custodians of the land known as Melbourne under settler colonialism), but we live and work in the Wurundjeri Nation (the traditional custodians of the land known as Melbourne under settler colonialism), but we The settler’s colonial name, which refers to the United States, was scattered across several states. One of the many legacies of colonization is that work emerging from the Global South is often marginalized by people in the Global North (who believe that knowledge transfer is strictly limited to centers of colonial power). (often implicitly assumed to flow to the periphery). Please read this work. We know that many of us are short on time or have special accessibility needs, so we designed it to be easy to skim. Our hope is that these conversations we have had in our own local communities will inspire others to have them in their own communities, centering on recognizing the harms in the mental health system. It’s about resonating, resourcing, amplifying, and hopefully doing it together. Progress is justice and restoration based on lived experience (not in time)!
