3 responses to “Alternative Mental Health Act Review: We need bold and ambitious changes”

  1. John Read

    Thanks to all involved in this excellent alternative review, especially Akiko Hart and Rai Waddingham.

  2. Graeme Morrish

    I would also like to see some acknowledgement of how traumatic forced treatment is with access to peer support and trauma counselling. I literally thought I was being forcibly injected with poison which would kill me & the trauma of this still haunts me now nearly 30 years later. Peer run services should be the norm & peer work recognised as the equal if not superior to clinical work. As a survivor of 10yrs in the system, a carer for 10 yrs, a MH Social Worker of 10yrs & a Peer Worker for 2 years I know the benefit of Peer Work which helped me more than anything. Pam Jenkinson & the radical separatist Wokingham Crisis House ? in Berkshire saved my life as professionals were banned & it was the only place I felt safe
    Access to spiritual & alternative therapies should also be enshrined in law

  3. Tim Wilson

    Read HVN review of MHA, agree with it, a wasted opportunity seems the same old same. Tim wilson member of revision (mental health alliance advocating a social model of mental distress/health – ref our, Revisions Seven manifesto for change in mental health services aims

    1. To move from a ‘diseased’ bio-psychiatric model of ‘mental illness’ to a social model of mental distress/health. We strive for a different approach ‘grounded’ in social fairness, listening, equity and social justice.

    2. To stop using all psychiatric diagnostic and classification systems

    3. To recognise what we need to achieve good mental health:

    Income, family, friendships, a safe home, opportunity, work, leisure, the arts, spirituality – plus many more which should be defined by individuals and communities themselves.
    Recognise oppression in all its forms and develop strategies to combat these at the individual and structural level.

    4. To assert that medication does not and cannot ‘cure’ mental distress.

    5. To work towards socially orientated and democratically accountable types of mental health service provision.

    6. To stop coercion – abolish Community Treatment Orders, ban electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and urgently review all mental health laws. MHAs inherently discriminatory in terms of human rights and also inherently racialist

    7. To challenge the current crude neo-liberal economic system that creates a fertile environment for ever increasing mental distress.

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