[NYAPRS Enews] MHW: Advocacy, Peer Collaboration at Center of International Efforts

[Harvey Rosenthal]

Advocacy, Peer Collaboration at Center of International Efforts

Mental Health Weekly  May 21, 2012

 

In a move to establish and build international collaborations between
consumer advocates in the United States and consumers with mental
illness

in Ghana and Kenya, a nonprofit organization in the United States is
networking and promoting cross-cultural learning opportunities,
grassroots

advocacy and peer support.

 

Through the use of Skype, webinars, conference calling and international
site visits, BasicNeeds US is providing technical assistance, advocacy
and financial support to consumers with mental illness and their
families in Ghana and Kenya and ultimately helping them live and work
successfully in their own communities, said organization officials.

 

"The goal is to increase awareness that there is a universal struggle
with the stigma of mental illness," Richard Dougherty, Ph.D., founder of
BasicNeeds US, told MHW. "It happens regardless of resources and
culture. We demonstrate that peer support and a self-help strategy are

effective models with low- and middle-income countries."

 

Dougherty, who is also CEO of DMA Health Strategies, a health management
firm, founded Basic-Needs US in 2008. The organization partnered with
BasicNeeds UK, a 10-year program in 11 low-income countries and one in
the United Kingdom, and considered the largest international program
dedicated to people with mental disorders, said Dougherty.

 

BasicNeeds US received a $12,000 grant from OptumHealth to support the
organization's International Peer Support Collaboration -an exchange of
knowledge and experience between peer support specialists from the
United States and mental health advocates in Ghana and Kenya, Dougherty
noted.

 

Last August, BasicNeeds US held a webinar with the Mental Health Society
of Ghana (MeHSOG) and consumer advocates in the United States during
which representatives from the New York Office of Mental Health,
OptumHealth, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration (SAMHSA) and MindFreedom, a nonprofit human rights
organization, were introduced to the work of BasicNeeds Ghana and
MeHSOG, Dougherty said.

 

BasicNeeds US's international local development partners work with
community health centers in Ghana and Kenya to help provide access to
medications for consumers with mental health disorders, said Dougherty.
"We work to increase support of the medications, but along with that we
help build and develop self-help strategy [approaches] for them," he
said.

 

Dougherty added, "We call it capacity building - a focus on individuals
and family members to help themselves and to help the community identify
their [healthrelated] needs."

 

"As we raise awareness about stigma in the community, consumers in those
countries begin to see the importance of advocacy and the need to change
things for themselves," he said. "You build hope and the desire for
improvement; you empower them," said Dougherty. "It goes way beyond our
capacity to help them."

 

The New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation (NYAPRS) is
lending its support to consumers in Ghana by sharing ideas about
grassroots advocacy and peer support, said Harvey Rosenthal, NYAPRS
executive director. "Advocacy, peer support and economic
self-sufficiency, for us, are the building blocks of recovery,"
Rosenthal told MHW.

 

NYAPRS has been in touch with the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse
University, an organization that advances public policy and employment
support for persons with disabilities, to help address employment issues
for the international population with mental illness, said Rosenthal.

 

"In general, BasicNeeds US is a terrific program which seeks to help
people and support the peer movement and recovery movement in Ghana to
address stigma and the need for employment and recovery that we all
experience," said Rosenthal.

 

Supporting youth

BasicNeeds US has also helped to link the U.S.-based Youth MOVE National
with an emerging youth advocacy movement in Kenya called One Mind, Lend
Your Voice, said Dougherty. Youth MOVE is a national advocacy
organization of young adults, similar to organizations such as the
National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) and Mental Health America
(MHA), he said.

 

BasicNeeds US last October helped to support a youth leadership summit
in Kenya. During the summit, youth discussed leadership,
entrepreneurism, mental health issues and responsibility for one's own
health, Dougherty said. Part of the OptumHealth grant funding supported
facilitation of the all-day discussion about mental health, he added.

 

"With these kinds of small steps, a truly international movement can
grow and be sustained," said Dougherty. *

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