Activating the Global Mental Health Revolution--- An Invitational Manifesto
It is time for a global mental health revolution. A revolution in how we view, talk about, support and enhance the health of all people everywhere. A revolution in which the concept of mental health is reclaimed and transformed. In which mental health is recognized as the fundamental intersecting point of individual well-being, community prosperity, social justice and global socioeconomic welfare.
As a result of international pandemic, social unrest and climate change billions are experiencing trauma, distress and anger this very day. We cannot wait to clarify out loud that mental health is not a good idea. That it is not the absence of mental illness or disability. It is not the result of financial success, or good character, or psychiatric services or medication. It is not that which begins and ends with the individual experience of wellness or suffering.
Mental health connects us all. It pervades cultures, ignores language, religion, ethnicity, wealth. It connects us to compassion, tethers us to the human experience of emotion, binds us to value, to history, and to each other.
It is a cause that cannot wait.
It is time to clarify that mental health is a human right. It is a right that you have and I have. A right that is systematically denied to billions, resulting in losses to hundreds of millions. A right that is undervalued everywhere, that is undermined by prejudice, power systems and the legacy of social control. A right to be demanded, to be fought for.
The Global Mental Health Revolution must take mental health back from taboo, judgment and psychopathology. instigate with conviction around a vision of a mentally healthy future for all. To connect the dots between degradation of communities and politics, legacies of racism, sexism, discrimination and bias, and the crush of economics and isolationism that threaten more than ever to ruin the worldwide human ecology. To bring wisdom, science and policy together in the spirit of global progress.
It is time to embrace the mental health of peoples everywhere in every way. To create supports where they have never existed; to massively expand and improve those that do; to eradicate cultural taboo, public stigma, discrimination and dehumanization surrounding mental health; to envision and activate self-care and peer support; to shift policy and funding from an afterthought to a forefront agenda; to reduce suicide death by empowering everyday people with support skills. It is time to put an end the world where mental health is the privilege of the wealthy, where mental illness is the burden of the poor.
What will the revolution look like? What could it accomplish?
Revolutions often emerge in reaction to an unacceptable present, but if they lack vision for a transformed future their energy dissipates quickly. Where revolutions also fail is where the vital component of protest and demonstration is not followed upon with clear demands for change to realize that vision.
Another area is where these efforts fail to engage with, or even sometimes adequately see, how they are connected to other movements, issues and missions. We cannot afford to overlook or undervalue any of these.
Mental health is public health priority that impacts every facet of every society.
What are elements of a mental health revolution
• Systematic change/eradication of discrimination and criminalization of people experiencing mental health challenges, those diagnosed and any encountering ‘crisis’ and distress
• Radically re-visioned community mental health services and supports for including urgent/emergent supports in the least restrictive/coercive
• Workplaces and employers that prioritize employee mental health in practices and policies, including resources and disability accommodations where needed
• An end to psychiatric incarceration, forced and coercive medication, medical restraints, seclusion and restraints and the use of criminal justice facilities as alternative to care and housing
• An end to the use of police force/intervention, racial profiling, excess force and the sanctioned murder of people in crisis, altered mental states, suicidal or other distress
• An end to statutory ‘sectioning’ as the key to access supports and services, whether or not based on medical necessity criteria
• (an end to any and all public policies which require individuals to relinquish civil and human rights to access help)
• local community-based resources and settings for supports everywhere that are provided and supported by members of that community, with or without clinical training
• Communities and people that are engaged with compassion when it comes to personal moments of intensity, crisis and transformation
• Cultures that celebrate rather than pathologize cognitive diversity, in which mental and emotional character variation is promoted for its value
• Access to alternative health modalities including therapies, alternative and natural medicine, nutritive care, acupuncture, spiritual/pastoral and culturally specific recovery practices, as part of basic health coverage
• A culture in which living with or having been challenged with any mental health condition is not a barrier to pursuit of personal goals, career, education, family, political or other. (and in which abrogation of these rights is protected by anti-discrimination, disabilities and/or anti-defamation statutes)
• Fundamentally restructured resources for personal and public health to support the expansion of mental health workforce, treatment options and community based services such that every person in need of support, regardless of socioeconomic standing, has access the quality care that meets their needs and preferences and that respects their fundamental right to dignity