Mental Health Survivors Research Articles

Edukasi Literasi Media Sosial dan Informasi Kesehatan Mental kepada Siswa Madrasah X

The number of mental health survivor, especially adolescents in Indonesia, shows an increase. Based on data from Basic Health Research in 2018, around 19 million people experienced mental stability disorders caused by psychic factors, economic factors, nutritional health factors, family factors, and social factors. But there is an interesting fact that the factors of social media use can also cause mental discomfort including: being insecure, closing or even withdrawing, feeling depressed, tremendous stress and so on after reading certain messages on social media. The community service activities that have been carried out focus on Madrasah X students with the aim of being able to increase knowledge and practical literacy skills related to the use of social media, social media ethics, and the selection of good and correct information so that mental health can be maintained positively. Discussion methods, role playing, and tutorials are carried out in this activity. Through this service activity, madrasah students are able to: understand the differences between some social media and the purpose of their use, understand the ethics of social media, and distinguish good and bad information for their mental health

From “Patient” to “Activist”: Treatment Experiences, Changing Perceptions, and Resistance of Mental Health Survivors

ABSTRACT The mental health survivors movement, composed of former and current mental health service consumers- turned activists is one of the most promising innovative and subversive phenomenon in the field of mental health (source, year). Although scholarly writing on this movement is slowly cumulating, much more empirical and theoretical work is needed to further our understanding of, and ability to learn from, this pioneering movement. Acknowledging mental health survivors as a population under continuous repression, and recognizing the various benefits of activism and of attempts at resistance, the current study endeavors to promote understanding of the process involved in mental health survivors’ transition from service consumers to activists. To approach this aim, the Present study explored the personal journey of ten Israeli mental health survivors-turned-activists. The findings describe difficult and crushing encounters with the mental health system. Participants describe a process of continuous experiences of dehumanization and humiliation leading survivors to the understanding that the system will not meet their needs and wants, but rather that they must develop their own voice, conceptions, and ways of coping. This understanding stands as a basis for a new look at one’s need and wants, which is manifested as developing more efficient and autonomous ways of coping, including through as social activism. The findings and discussion stress the challenges facing the professional community to confront the harsh and disturbing testimonies provided by mental health Survivors, and call upon professionals, both practitioners and researchers, to search for ways to cooperate with these novel attempts at change.

Our lives in three parts: an autoethnographic account of two undergraduates and their respective psychiatric careers

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide an autoethnographic account of the stories of a mental health professional and a mental health survivor. Design/methodology/approach Using the autoethnographic approach, the authors provide summaries of their respective psychiatric careers in three parts. Findings The authors studied at the same University, Reading. Voyce failed his Politics finals and embarked on a trajectory as a mental patient. Carson graduated in Psychology and trained as a clinical psychologist. The recovery movement brought them together, and they have now established an educational and personal bond. Research limitations/implications These are of course only two accounts, yet both authors have played a role in developing the recovery model in Britain. The accounts and story show the benefits of adopting a partnership approach between professional and service user. Practical implications Both accounts are recovery journeys in their own way. Both highlight the value of education for recovery. Social implications There is no doubt that clinical psychologists are both highly valued and well paid for their expertise. However, the expertise gained through Andrew’s life experience is equally invaluable for today’s mental health professionals to learn from, but perhaps not as well remunerated. Originality/value Both accounts stretch back over 45 years and have covered the move from institutional to community care. This paper presents two contrasting perspectives on these changes and the lives of the two people involved.

“In these streets”: the saliency of place in an alternative black mental health resource centre

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore experiences of survivors of the mental health system regularly attending a mental health resource centre predominantly but not exclusively focussed on needs of the BAME community. Design/methodology/approach In total, 25 participants took part in a qualitative research study regarding their experiences of mental health and racism, alternative mental health support and struggles in the local black community. Findings Issues of race, place and space were central to the experiences of BAME mental health survivors. Participants emphasised the importance of place-based support in their everyday life, with the service provided engendering a sense of belonging conducive to coping with various struggles. Race and racism were also central to these daily struggles and the place of Liverpool 8 was at the core of notions of identity and belonging. The space within the centre provided a sanctuary from the combined discriminations and exclusions attendant on being BAME survivors of the mental health system. Practical implications Attention to matters of place and space appears crucial to the articulation of appropriate support. Social implications Place is salient to understanding the intersecting identities/experience of racism and mental health discrimination, constituting the basis for a concept of placism; associated with exclusions from feeling safe and included in everyday public places (including within the black community) with the exception of the welcoming and unconditionally accepting space of the centre. Originality/value This paper is the first to inquire into place-based experiences of alternative black mental health support. Placism is a novel construct that merits further inquiry and theoretical development.

When Madness Meets Madness: Insider Reflections on Doing Mental Health Research

Insider–outsider relations in qualitative research have been heavily studied. Yet there is a dearth in the literature exploring how people who have experienced madness produce knowledge and overcome trying circumstances when they do qualitative mental health research with other survivors. This article fills this gap through a critical reflection on my experiences with psychosis and involuntary hospitalization and how they shaped dialogue with my participants. Situated within a narrative framework of inquiry, I reveal how self-disclosure and critical forms of relationality during interviews with 10 psychiatric survivors produced a survivor-centered knowledge that nuances biomedical understandings of mental illness and the mental health system. Practices of self-disclosure revealed how survivors and I had to navigate familial expectations as we recovered and tried to regain a sense of identity. Doing insider research also helped me overcome the periods of embarrassment and stigma in my psychosis, as I learned through critical dialogue how traumatic events can provide unique avenues for intense self-reflection and the development of greater empathy for mental health survivors. I also discuss some of the ethical concerns and limitations of having an insider status in qualitative mental health research, and how self-disclosure may present certain epistemological challenges in the research process.

The INFORM Project: A Service User-Led Research Endeavor

Effective engagement with people who experience mental health care services, as research participants and as research leads, is presented. A group of volunteer mental health survivors, called INFORM, worked for 6 years to develop and complete a research project, exploring service user experience of a home treatment and crisis resolution service. Within the article, discussion is given to the significance of service continuity, alongside personal accounts of the impact and consequences of health care staff's interpersonal interactions. Two contrasting messages arise from this study: first, the articulation of what services users want from services, and how that relates to what they actually receive, continues to be a necessary debate and issue for consideration at a time of considerable health care reform. The second message is that such articulation, although necessary, is not sufficient in itself to ensure that services are responsive to service user needs and preferences. Findings from the evaluation are consistent with other service user-led research. However, what is also evident is that more work is required in enabling health care consumers to provide feedback that can then be used to inform practice and service delivery improvement.

Voices of Experience: Narratives of Mental Health Survivors

Voices of Experience: Narratives of Mental Health Survivors

Participatory and evidence-informed general practice

Evidence-informed health care requires clinicians to combine their clinical experience with research evidence, in addition to the values of their patients.1,2 There is a complementary argument for participatory approaches that integrate clinical experience and patient values within evidence-informed clinical guidelines and standards of care. This melding of patients' values and evidence is challenging for two reasons. The first challenge is how to integrate, rather than choose between, these different forms of knowledge when making decisions about how services should operate. The second challenge is how to involve many clinicians and many service users in decisions with wide-reaching consequences. Making decisions collectively about priorities and standards raises questions about whom to involve and how, and about the evidence to inform these decisions. Public participation at a collective level has often been initiated by the public. In 1960s Britain, parents campaigned for better hospital services for children. Since then, pregnant women and young families have campaigned for improvements in British maternity services. Breast cancer, HIV/AIDS, and mental health survivors have campaigned internationally for better care and more relevant research. Now public participation is often initiated by research and service organisations who wish to involve patients more broadly, not only those aligned with campaigning organisations. Public involvement meets evidence-informed health care in prioritising issues for research, in conducting research, in developing evidence-informed guidelines and standards of care, and in monitoring that care. There is strong policy support for public involvement in research. INVOLVE is the national advisory group, funded through the …

My mental health

Mental health survivor and activist Amanda wells says she will be resisting the latest survivor trend to go drug-free

Mental health survivors: your colleagues.

An increasing number of mental health survivors or people who have episodes of mental illness (EOMI) are seeking employment and training as mental health workers (Health Workforce Advisory Committee 2002). Problems for such individuals, as students and in the workforce, will be discussed with special reference to those who are training to complete the New Zealand National Certification in Mental Health Support Work. This article seeks to encourage health professionals to reassess their roles in regard to supported employment for people who have EOMI and to alert them as to the rising number of people who successfully work as trained professionals within mental health areas and have EOMI. The reader is encouraged to reflect on the recovery approach itself and the journey that people who have EOMI encounter when they choose to enter the workforce. This is especially useful to health professionals working in mental health such as consumer groups and nurses. An example of a student who has EOMI is included and the pseudonym "Joe" is applied to this student to protect his identity.

Not being mentally ill

Much of the social scientific work on psychiatry and mental health, from a variety of competing perspectives, has focused upon power and the social construction of ‘mental illness’. Very little attention has been paid to resistance or to the various ways in which ‘patients’ or ‘survivors’ (as some now prefer to refer to themselves) have sought to socially deconstruct ‘mental illness’. This paper seeks to redress that balance by way of a detailed examination of some of the key practices of resistance which have developed within the context of the UK mental health survivors movement. Using key concepts from Bourdieu's theory of practice, it examines the challenge which survivors have mounted to the symbolic power of psychiatry, and the resistance habitus which their opposition has given rise to.

Not Just Users of Services, but Contributors to Society: the Opportunities of the Disability Rights Agenda

In 2001 Ms Melanophy – a successful customer services manager in an educational publishing company – won an employment tribunal case. Her performance and conduct had been temporarily affected by her manic depression. Rather than finding out what the problem was, the employer sacked her for gross misconduct while she was absent from work receiving treatment in a psychiatric hospital. The tribunal found that, under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the employer had acted ‘hastily and prematurely’ and had treated her less favourably because of her disability: in other words, she had been subject to discrimination. Mental health survivors and professionals have become so used to the daily reality of discrimination – NIMBY campaigns that de-rail service developments, insurance and mortgage refusals, media headlines like ‘Nuts to be caged for life by docs’ (The Sun, 2000) – that it is easy to overlook new developments that begin to confer rights. After years of having passively to accept discrimination with virtually no redress, it may be hard to believe that change is possible. Yet Ms Melanophy was significantly aided by recent disability rights policy. Before 1996 there was no law in force to prohibit employment discrimination on grounds of mental health status or other disability. Before 2000 there was no Disability Rights Commission (DRC) to enforce the law and promote equality of opportunity. Ms Melanophy’s case was backed and funded by the DRC whose chair, Bert Massie, stated: ‘Thousands of people with manic depression hold down good jobs successfully and bosses need to be sensitive to the particular impact of an employee’s disability and respond appropriately. Employers have every right to expect high performance but it does not make good business sense to sack people hastily. This case shows that employers are putting themselves at risk of litigation if they do so’ (Community Care, 3 May 2001).

Crossing bridges over troubled waters?: Working with children of parents experiencing mental distress

This article is a critical review of Crossing Bridges, a Department of Health training pack for those working with 'mentally ill' parents and their children. The author argues, on the basis of both personal and professional experience, that although the pack pays lip-service to the significance of structural factors, the training resources are primarily rooted in an individual and family-focused pathology model of mental illness. Three arguments are put forward for the necessity of a wider framework: the significance of shame and stigma to those experiencing mental distress and their families; the predominance of understandings of mental illness that translate social phenomena into individualised problems, notably genetic explanations and attributions of risk and dangerousness; and the contribution of motherhood to the experiencing of mental distress in women. Initiatives within the mental health survivor movement are highlighted as examples promoting positive images of mental distress, and the implications of the issues raised for social work education are considered. The article concludes that efforts to help the children of 'mentally ill' parents, not to mention the parents themselves, must incorporate wider strategies to promote openness, respect, acceptance and ultimately, social inclusion, of those who experience mental distress.