By Gabrielle Johnson, Communications & Membership Manager at NSUN
In 2021, NSUN’s former CEO Akiko Hart wrote a blog entitled ‘Why NSUN doesn’t do World Mental Health Day’, outlining the ways in which individuals with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress or trauma have been continuously failed by the mental healthcare system and its governments, and our associated rejection of so-called ‘anti-stigma awareness campaigns’. Since that time, very little has changed in the way of structural support for the people WMHD supposedly advocates for, but much has for the corporations and governments from whom we will surely receive the usual tokenistic post claiming their support of ‘mental wellbeing’, while they continue to profit from cutting the services which genuinely operate to support the people they momentarily claim to serve.
World Mental Health Day was not created for the people who need reminding that “mental health matters”. This event serves to tick an annual quota box and simultaneously remind everyone without the power to enact real change that a ‘solution’ lies not with each state responsible for chronically underfunding services and creating social and material conditions that drive distress, but with the individual’s ability to “talk about mental health”, and everyone else to “check in on your family member/friend/employee”. Beyond that, the instructions are uncertain, though for NSUN members and many others, the solutions are very clear.
To mark our resistance to what we believe is a misallocation of funds and attention, we have chosen to spotlight areas of existing and necessary work that aim to genuinely support those living in the silences between annual awareness days, those who the signposted services have not supported or ‘saved’, and call for a reconsideration of WMHD in place of year-round funding for user-led groups and the support they provide, as well as structural change and the proper resourcing of our existing statutory mental health services.
We feel that the following issues are repeatedly ignored by the Governments, charities and corporations that spearhead sanitised awareness days, and fail to genuinely engage with the structural and political issues which threaten our ability to lead liveable lives: we deserve more than to be tolerated and kept alive, we deserve to thrive.
Cuts to support for Disabled people
Over the past year, the UK government under both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer has repeatedly imposed changes to social policy which threaten to strip Disabled people of their access to vital support. NSUN has campaigned alongside other Disabled People’s Organisations against changes to the Work Capability Assessment which threatened to force individuals into unsuitable work and reduce benefit support by £400, an absence of transformative reforms to the Mental Health Act, the removal of vital support for Disabled people via PIP reforms, the reduction of access to social security and increasing sanctions, and the introduction of mass financial surveillance powers to allow the DWP to access claimant’s financial records without consent.
We cannot talk about liberation and care for those with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress and trauma without talking about disability justice, an intersection often neglected by the focus of awareness days. If we’re serious about improving the lives of people living with mental ill-health, distress and trauma, we must meaningfully engage in resisting attempts to remove already-limited support provided by the state to Disabled people.
A lack of support and infrastructure for survivor research
So often, co-produced spaces within mental health implement extractive or exploitative approaches in a bid to change policy from the inside without truly acknowledging their structural flaws. This is particularly apparent within research. As a lived experience-led organisation, NSUN advocates for genuinely user- and survivor-led mental health work on the issues that matter to the individuals and groups at the sharp end of the mental health system. We have supported NSUN members directly to conduct research and produce reports on trans and non-binary service users’ experience of single sex wards in mental health settings, the concept of “community” and its co-option in the mental health lived experience landscape and injustices around menstrual health in psychiatric inpatient settings.
We call on those with money and power, particularly within the ivory towers of academia, to redistribute it to truly lived experience-led projects, enabling them to produce meaningful and ethical research outside of bureaucratic settings such as academic institutions or the NHS.
The absence of resourcing for user-led groups and community action
The fundraising sector remains inaccessible and restricted, making it near-impossible for many user-led groups to gain support without conforming to traditional structures and outputs of work. By providing guidance on navigating the sector and directly supporting user-led campaigns such as Stop Oxevision and StopSIM, we aim to demystify the charity sector and enable individuals with lived experience to make changes to the systems which directly affect them and work to support one another in the absence of genuine state care.
Outside of state-sanctioned provision, so much is possible given the right support. Despite restricted and unavailable funding, user-led groups operate across the country and world to support their local communities and those most in need, filling the gaps of provision left by our government. In the context of the UK’s Hostile Environment, NSUN supports user-led groups operating at the intersection between mental health and migrant justice to build capacity and secure funding to continue their services. To reduce funding restrictions and support groups least likely to gain traditional funding, we provide micro-grants to user-led groups and encourage other mental health charities with capacity to pay it forward to grassroots groups, rather than engaging in cyclical anti-stigma campaigns with little tangible impact.
The failure to platform critical survivor voices
To many, World Mental Health Day and the multi-national corporations which endorse it are the ‘voice’ of mental health, and proof of so-called ‘genuine’ support available to those experiencing mental ill-health, distress and trauma. As such, it is essential that space and support is given to those with lived experience to speak for themselves, so that nothing is said about us, without us. By amplifying the perspectives of individuals with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress and trauma, and not shying away from amplifying the critical or less ‘palatable’ opinions and experiences, we can and should use our platforms year-round to draw attention to often unheard, or oppressed voices on the issues that truly affect them: the failure of therapy provision, abuse in mental health hospitals, the trauma of the immigration system, the weaponisation of diagnostic labels, misogynoir in healthcare and the failings of suicide ‘prevention’.
All talk, no action
Each year, NSUN and its members witness the fleeting spark of attention which awareness days attract quickly fizzle back into inaction, mirroring the all-too familiar experience of being told to reach out for support only to be promptly placed on an endless waiting list, passed from pillar to post, or abused and disempowered by the services you were told would help.
We don’t want to oversimplify or undermine the significance of awareness days: many in the survivor/user movement have spent a huge amount of time and energy fighting for increased awareness, and stigma still exists and causes significant harm. However, when World Mental Health Day is over once again, we will still be Mad, or ill, or however else we choose to describe our distress. We will still be facing the same issues we’ve been battling for decades. We need to do more than talk about mental health: we need to direct that energy towards meaningful action in the areas that will make a tangible difference to our lives, beginning by acknowledging who World Mental Health Day truly serves, and how we can reclaim our distress.
You can find out more about our work and membership via our website here, and register to attend our hosted project Synergi’s ‘Anti-World Mental Health Day’ event by clicking here.