Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Letter endorsing the recent UN Special Rapporteur's report on Mental Health

As Akiko Hart recently posted on Facebook, Mental Health Europe and the British Psychological Society are looking for signatories to a letter endorsing the recent and ground breaking United Nations Special Rapporteur's report on mental health - to raise awareness of it among the media, policy makers and the mental health sector.

The report calls for a shift away from isolating mental health services which are coercive and inappropriately medicalised to ones that are recovery and community-based & promote social inclusion.

You can find the report here: http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/35/21.
You can find our letter here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5ywdxhplXT3SFMyeGxoYUt5TFU.

Some quotes from the report:
-"The history of psychiatry and mental health care is marked by egregious rights violations"
- "We have been sold a myth that the best solutions for addressing mental health challenges are medications and other biomedical interventions".
- "Conventional wisdom based on a reductionist biomedical interpretation of complex mental health-related issues dominates mental health policies and services, even when not supported by research".
- "For decades now, an evidence base informed by experiential and scientific research has been accumulating in support of psychosocial, recovery-oriented services and support and non-coercive alternatives to existing services".

A number of organisations from the UK, Europe and beyond have signed. 
If you or your organisation would be interested in signing, please contact ailbhe.finn@mhe-sme.org or email UNlettergroup@gmail.com, and we’ll add your name.


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