International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience
Open Access

Abstract

In September 2018, the World Health Organisation hosted the Annual Mental Health Gap Forum. WHO launched mental health as the fifth noncommunicable disease reflecting a significant shift in responding to mental health at a global level as another public health issue require a global crisis response. The writer found himself at this forum through a political process of transformative recovery. His contribution to the Mental Health Gap Forum at ‘WHO’ and the Inaugural Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit in London September 2018 reflect the growth and capacity of humanity are experiencing mental distress and contact with the public mental health system in Australia as a service user. Furthermore, his family caregiver mental health lived experience and professional mental health social work experience are drawn together throughout a retrospective autoethnographic account of global mental health advocacy as a person with lived experience of mental distress and as an international social worker. He documents the process of using his experience to advocate for other silenced people and groups with lived experience to be involved throughout the global decision making bodies and service systems. He identifies the importance of peer work as a human rights discipline and an area for social work to develop strong global allegiance. The autoethnography account maps his journey throughout 2018, from admission to a psychiatric hospital in June 2018 to undertake global mental health advocacy on behalf of his lived experience community at ‘WHO’ in September 2018. The results illustrate the importance of lived experience leadership in mental health and international social work as a means to achieve attitudinal change at WHO in focusing on human rights and social justice as core interventions to redressing the global mental health crisis.

Biography

E-mail: matt.jackman@monash.edu