Hello everyone, welcome to another audio blog by Matthew Mckenzie a carer from Lewisham working with the South

London and Maudsley NHS Trust along with SLaM TWIG Ops to promote services and keep carers, service users and health professionals informed. You can check out our Facebook page which usually has daily news updates on mental health news in and around South London, we sometimes upload photos to Facebook and love likes and discussions. Feel free to follow SLaM TWIG Ops twitter page on updates and perhaps retweet anything you feel interested in. Or for more in-depth details you can follow SLaM TWIG Ops blog which sometimes has similar updates to Facebook, but more in-depth topics on many updates concerning mental health and health communities in South London. http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/events/2013/10/global-mental-health-howservice-user-involvement-can-advance-research-and-advocacy On Thursday the 10th of October 2013 - It was world mental health day 2013. There were many events raising awareness of mental health around the UK and around the world. I was planning to go to many events, but I had booked myself for an event at the LSHTM, which stands for The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Now they presented an event called "Global Mental Health: How service user involvement can advance research and advocacy". Now before I continue, I must apologise if I get any names wrong or make mistakes on key concepts, I just hope I can bring enough information for those interested in mental health to gain further insight. This event had an exciting array of speakers worth listening to: At the event we had the Professor of Public Health and Primary Care - Andy Haines. Then the Deputy Director for Centre for Global Mental Health Dr Mary De Silva spoke. Next was Dr Helen Gilburt, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London There was also a chance to meet Ruby Wax, poster girl for mental illness, writer, performer and comedian. We also had a speaker from Nepal who is also a columnist for the Guardian on mental health. I think his name was Jagannath, although I am not so sure. Plus there was an opportunity to meet prospective students and lecturers to discuss the new MSc course in Global Mental Health. So what happened at the event? And in order to keep this audio blog short. Ill briefly go through some of the main key areas mentioned in the event.

The event was about a way to have greater involvement of service users in mental health research, service development and advocacy as a growing priority in the global mental health community.

First as mentioned before we had a welcome from Andy Haines Andy talked about how great it is to see new faces, and reminded people to follow them on twitter; he talked about how it is important to make a link between mental health and global health and also to help raise global mental health, advocacy and service user involvement awareness. Andy feels that mental health has moved up the agenda in world health fields. He states that suicide is common cause of mental ill health, plus paternal health is affected by depression. This affects mother & father. Plus chronic disease is more likely to make people depressed, and then this can lead to even worse chronic disease as a cycle of depression exacerbates physical health. Andy Haines posed a question - What can be done about this? He feels that we need to raise awareness to research funders and it was good that joint venture between Kings College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine can help in awareness. ----------------------------------------Next we had Dr Mary De Silva who spoke about how the centre for global mental health is working with partners to build a global movement to network researchers, communicate with policy makers and practitioners, and highlight the importance of strengthening service user advocacy networks worldwide. Now Dr Mary De Silva spoke about why she wanted to work in global mental health: She spoke about a teacher in Ghana who by the age of 23 developed mental health problems; his brother ended up taking him to hospital, but 13 years later he relapsed due to drug use. Eventually a Healer drilled hole in the log and chained him to the log . Due to Financial problems this caused him to be there, chained to this log, for a year and a half because the family could not afford the psychotic injection. Dr Mary mentioned that luckily the teacher suffering mental healthproblems is now back teaching, but she felt the lack of access to effective interventions caused this trouble. It seems that 20 was all that was needed. However 900 million people every year suffer from a mental health problem. There seems to be almost no

intervention, or little intervention. on global mental health. The cost of mental health problems is $2.5 trillion. There is also a large treatment gap. In Ethiopia many are restrained, Indonesia uses the word pesung, since it is so common. It is a breaches human rights, which we have to highlight and address. But How? - Dr Mary De Silva felt that improving their life and relationship can help this. - Also how can we reduce the treatment gap? - Dr Mary De Silva felt we need to work with policy makers.

Mary De Silva spoke on some key actions affecting global mental health One problem is that there are no trained human resources. The solution is to build capacity. Train non-specialist workers via task sharing. Plus community workers can be used for this, one good example in the Indian government. 2nd solution - was to train existing health workers in accordance with mental health. 3rd solution - would be to introduce the impact of the MSc in global mental health MSc course. Some of the graduates have gone on to jobs, but they need more researchers

Other actions were that There are high rates of suicide and physical health problems, The solution would be collaborative care; they can treat the whole person, body and mind. Dr Mary showed good examples in Africa, on how alcohol misuse can be treated. How we c an integrate mental health into physical health service. Dr Mary felt we need multidisciplinary teams. We need different professionals working together, and Mary explained a good example in India and this could be adaptive in Ethiopia.

The 3rd action. Was use of technology, because the cost is so expensive and the correct use of technology can save money.

The 4th action is - to start early.

Then the 5th action - was to prevent suicide, more die to this that wars

The 6th and last action is to combat sigma Dr Mary spoke about the recent newspaper story by The Sun, which '1,200 killed by mental patients headline labelled 'irresponsible and wrong'. She felt mental health incidents were caused by those not in treatments and the numbers of deaths are falling. She felt we need to combat against this stigma, but with current media giants, we are up against a mountain.

-----

Dr Mary De Silva Mentioned PRIME. PRIME stands for Programme for Improving Mental health carE Which can be viewed at http://www.prime.uct.ac.za/ PRIME is a consortium of research institutions and Ministries of Health in five countries in Asia and Africa (Ethiopia, India, Nepal, South Africa & Uganda), with partners in the UK and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Dr Mary talked about Why the treatment gap? She felt Researchers tend to talk to donors. How can we get them to talk to civil society and policy makers? Something needs to build partnerships in communication. Dr Mary felt it was so important to build a database of innovations

Training manuals, publications...(speaking to students mainly), share knowledge. Looking at cost, key summaries, do not reinvent the wheel. We need to exchange the knowledge, capacity building, how to run a webinar, we will also be working with policy makers to persuade them to raise interventions.

One of the most important concepts from Dr Mary De Silva is how she spoke that: Recovery is an individual story..... and this causes problem from a global point of view. We need to engage with service users, because they can tell us what we need.

The motto is "Nothing about us, without us."

--------------------------------------------------------

Next we had: Dr Helen Gilburt of Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London.

Now she spoke about SURE which means (Service User Research Enterprise) and how "SURE" undertakes research that tests the effectiveness of services and treatments from the perspective of people with mental health problems and their carers. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/iop/depts/hspr/research/ciemh/sure/index.aspx You can find out more about s.u.r.e "kcl sure" in google. S.U.R.E aims to involve service users in a collaborative way in the whole research process: from design to data collection, through to data analysis and dissemination of results.

Now Dr Helen Gilburt Joined as a researcher, but also as a service user. She talked about the history of service user involvements. She then looked into the Challenges of existing knowledge, fought for by activist movements. she mentioned how low level local projects came into existence and then expanded. Dr Helen Gilburt mentioned how we ended up changing policy.

Dr Helen talked about : The importance of service user involvement in health service development and research The establishment of INVOLVE ( ) to advise the Department of Health on public involvement in research Development of research groups with core focus on involvement & change.

--------------------------

Dr Helen then talked about what is involvement? She mentioned that it is a connection between user-led projects and consultation.

She then talked about different philosophies in accordance to rebalancing of power from the status quo. These being: Emancipation Empowerement Bringing social change - which seems most that most research should be on change.

-----

Dr Helen talked about the role of service users in research -

Where service users can: Identify priorities for research Identify and assess research questions Collect data Provide insights into analysis And other roles..

She then spoke about the: Benefits of user involvement

----------

They can help in adding questions and choosing outcomes that are important to service users Add a generation of new and more in-depth knowledge help in recruitment by accessing marginalised groups help in interviewing by obtaining different responses Help in analysis by using different interpretation of responses Plus also help in dissemination, but looking into different mechanisms and language.

Dr Helen then spoke about the global perspective on service user involvement: She spoke about the number of national and international networks and ways to increase them She mentioned how the global perspective on mental health is dominated by western countries, which is not often a good sign.

-----------

Dr Helen then spoke about the disparate groups across other countries which can be less co-ordinated. She mentioned that there is little strategic support for user involvement across the world And many groups still are underpinned by activism.

Dr Helen Gilburt looked into one of the most important aspects of fostering global user involvement Support and development of existing mental health activism fostering networks, both national and international building capacity and skills. empowering people with mental health problems Drawing on the lessons of international development Lobbying for strategic support for the user voice, user involvement and wider recognition of mental health as a priority.

-----------------

We then got a TED talk video from Ruby Wax on how she feels about mental health and how it affects the community. The TED talk was recorded at TEDGlobal.

You can view the video on YouTube, by typing in on google. "Ruby Wax what's so funny about mental illness"

Then the event ended with a Q&A session at the panel. Where questions were asked to Jagannath Lamichhane, Dr Mary De Silva and Dr Helen Gilburt. We then had a reception at the school's South Courtyard Cafe, where I personally spoke to Dr Mary De Silva and other researchers.

What did I think of the event?

Well the event was huge and the School's "John Snow" lecture theatre was so impressive, I kept thinking about how much the theatre cost. The talks and presentations were very informative and the organisers were professional and eager to ask me my experience on mental health. I am hoping to speak to one of them in the coming months. I hope my audio blog has been informative and I am sure to come up with more soon. Thank you for listening to our blog from SLaM TWIG Ops. Please remember to check out our other social media sites being our blog on wordpress, Facebook updates and twitter or youtube for more news and updates.

Thank you.