Follow Wayne Cho – World Runner for Mental Health http://www.loveworldrun.com/blog
Hello World Run Lovers:)
Hope you are enjoying the holiday season. Just wanted to give you a little update before the world run kick-off on New Year’s Day.
World Run in the news
Check it out if you like:
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20111228/
bc_run_around_the_world_mental_illness_111228/20111228/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome
Resolution Run – 1/1/2012
I will be starting the world run with a group of friends and a few hundred participants at the Resolution Run in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Continue reading →
Thank you to our member Ieva Leimane-Veldmeijere – Director of Zelda – The Resource Centre for People with Mental Disability ZELDA, Latvia.
See the English version below of their submission to the Legal Affairs Committee regarding amendments to the legal capacity institute in the Civil Law and Civil Procedure Law.
http://zelda.org.lv/wp-content/uploads/Opinion-concerning-the-amendments-to-Civil-Law-and-Civil-Procedure-Law-regarding-legal-capacity1.pdf
see also : www.facebook.com/WorldHealthOrganization
Dear Colleague
To mark Human Rights Day, 10 December 2011, we are launching the World Health Organization’s QualityRights Project – Act, Unite and Empower for Better Mental Health. This project aims to tackle the widespread violations experienced by people with mental health conditions in health care context and in the community in countries throughout the world.
It provides support to countries to improve the quality of care and human rights conditions in mental health and social care services. The project builds capacity of health care workers, service users and families to understand and promote human rights and empowers people with mental health conditions to advocate for their rights and influence national mental health reform efforts. At the same time the project works to produce sustainable change through policy and law reform in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
We are also pleased to announce the support of Gary Foster for WHO’s QualityRights project. Gary Foster is the producer of several major Hollywood movies including “Sleepless in Seattle”, ” The Score”, “Tin Cup”, “Daredevil”, as well as the critically-acclaimed 2009 film “The Soloist”, which recounts the true life story of a former cello prodigy who developed a mental health condition and became homeless in the streets of Los Angeles.
To date, QualityRights countries include Spain (Asturias), Portugal, Panama, Greece, Somalia and India.
To learn more about the WHO QualityRights Project, please visit the WHO QualityRights website: http://www.who.int/mental_health/policy/quality_rights/en/index.html
For the video statement by Gary Foster, please visit: http://vimeo.com/whomentalhealth/gary-foster-qualityrights
If you are interested in providing funding for countries to participate in QualityRights, please contact me at the address below.
Feel free to disseminate this information to your network.
Best wishes
Michelle
Dr Michelle Funk
Coordinator, Mental Health Policy and Service Development (MHP)
Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse,
World Health Organization
20 Avenue Appia, CH-1211 Genève 27
Switzerland
Tel: +41-22 791 3855
Email: funkm@who.int
See the post by our member for the Disability and Human Rights blog
www.disabilityandhumanrights.com
Action for Mental Illness India – a mental health advocacy initiative and its efforts to improve the living condition of persons living with mental illness and their families
As we are celebrating the World Day of Persons with Disabilities, it is important to acknowledge and honour the efforts and achievements of civil society, particular groups representing persons with disabilities and their families, worldwide. As an example of how civil society groups and non-governmental organisations can actively bring change via various strategies, this blog illustrates some of the achievements of ‘Action for Mental Illness’ (ACMI[i]), an Indian mental health advocacy initiative. The initiative was founded 2003 in collaboration between Mrs. Laila Ollapally, an advocate at the High Court in the state of Karnataka, and Dr. Nirmala Srinivasan, a disability activist who had previously established a self help group for persons with mental illness and their families named AMEND (Association for the Mentally Disabled). Continue reading →
December 3rd, International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Together for a better world: Including persons with disabilities in development
http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=1561
At Mental Health Worldwide we are encouraging and supporting countries to ratify and implement the UN Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Persons disabled by mental health conditions are included under this convention.
Article 1: The purpose of the present Convention is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.
Persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.
We welcome a new member to Mental Health Worldwide from Sudan. Our latest member is also a graduate from the International Diploma Program in Mental Health Law and Human Rights, as well as a legal advisor and lecturer in Constitutional Law and Human Rights. Welcome to our global group!
So we have the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) that obliges governments to ensure persons with psychosocial disabilities participate in all activities and decisions that impact them. Now we need to discuss how we ensure this participation takes place. See the disability and human rights blog for various discussions at www.disabilityandhumanrights.com
Thank you!! To Charles O’Mahony, Dr. Mary Keys and CDLP group for this submission. This submission is to the Dept of Health in Ireland for Review of the Mental Health Act 2001. However this will be a very useful resource for any of us evaluating mental health legislation especially as this assessment was done in light of human rights law and the UN CRPD.
http://www.nuigalway.ie/cdlp/documents/cdlp_mental_health_act_2001_submission.pdf
Proposed Merged of Irish Human Rights Commission and Equality Authority.
Submission
Centre for Disability Law & Policy,
NUI Galway.
www.nuigalway.ie/cdlp
1. Introduction.
The Centre for Disability Law and Policy at the National University of Ireland (Galway) is thankful for the opportunity to provide its views as to the proposed merger of the Irish Human Rights Commission and the Equality Authority.
The Centre was established in 2008 and publishes research based on best international practice to inform Irish policy debates. Because of its area of specialization on disability it will focus more on the first question posed in the call for proposals: vis, what do people think the new body should do.
In general, the Centre supports the merger of the Equality Authority and the Irish Human Rights Commission provided there is an ironclad guarantee of independence. This submission focuses on the vital role that the merged body can and should play to advance the rights of persons with disabilities in Ireland both generally and more specifically under the under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD, 2006) which Ireland has signed (2007) and is poised to ratify.
Article 33.2. of the UN CRPD will oblige Government to designate a framework with one or more independent mechanisms to ‘promote, protect and monitor’ the CRPD.
Our primary recommendation is that the Government should make a formal decision to explicitly designate the merged body as the ‘independent’ element in any such framework under Article 33.2 UN CRPD. This would be consistent with international best practice whereby such independent human rights and equality bodies have been designated the independent element of the relevant domestic CRPD framework. It would be consistent with the decision of the British Government to jointly designate the Northern Irish Human Rights Commission and Equality Commission as the relevant independent mechanism and thus fulfill Irelands’ obligation under the Good Friday Agreement to ensure an ‘equivalent level’ of protection of human rights. Continue reading →
Robin’s photos are vivid, stark and disturbing. Unfortunately they depict scenes of the fate and vulnerability of persons with mental health conditions in some parts of the world that we have seen too often. We hope with every photo, every story … we come closer to changing the world in this regard. Thank you Robin for sharing this story.
http://www.panos.co.uk/stories/2-13-1299-1805/Robin-Hammond/Condemned/
