The former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, Professor Dainius Puras, has led the way in endorsing Give 5: Steps to a Wellbeing Rights Framework.

This new human rights framework, launched on World Mental Health Day in the MAC Arts Centre, Belfast, is grounded in United Nations and World Health Organisation human rights standards. It is evidence based and highlights essential steps government must take to take to protect and promote people’s right to good mental health. Read more here.

Give 5 has already gained significant support, including from UNISON, the largest health union. Click here now to add your support.

Professor Dainius Puras, in his keynote address, highlighted the urgent need for policy changes to uphold the rights outlined in Give 5:

“There is increasing understanding globally that mental health related challenges should be addressed differently, and first this is about fully embracing a human rights-based approach. The heavy reliance on fixing individual “disorders” and further investments in status quo reinforce the vicious cycle of discrimination, disempowerment, coercion and over-medicalisation.

This is why change is needed. It is already happening in many parts of the world, through innovative rights based, non-coercive services and initiatives, such as the Give 5 Rights Framework, which I commend to government and recommend they support.”

The five, inter-connected elements of the Give 5 framework are as follows:

• Connect the symptoms of ‘mental ill-health’ to their root causes.
• Be active in challenging the overprescribing of antidepressants and in providing a wider range of community-based options for healing.
• Take notice of and act on the knowledge and wisdom of people with first-hand experience.
• Learn from failures in previous policy and practice and support people’s right to openness, honesty and accountability.
• Giving people the dignity, compassion and hope to which they are entitled.

The packed event heard testimonies from many activists with first-hand experience of the failures of mental health services, including families who had lost loved ones because of those failures. Speaker after speaker highlighted the need for a radical change in the current approach to mental health, driven by a deep desire to ensure no one else should experience preventable harms and suffering. Contributors also acknowledged the moral injury being caused to those people working in a system that is not fit for purpose:

“I have huge respect for those trying to support within a fractured service… that’s how the light gets in.” Noelle McAliden, NI Mental Health Arts Festival.

Activist Jane Campbell-Grace spoke eloquently about the healing power of the creativity and the arts:

“We need connection, we need meaning, and we need a sense of purpose. I know personally that creativity has grounded me through the toughest of times…”

Failure by government to address the steps outlined in Give 5, and to instead place the focus solely on what individuals should do, runs the real risk of increasing feelings of blame and shame amongst individuals.

New Script Organiser, Sara Boyce, emphasised the growing global movement to rethink how communities understand and respond to mental distress and trauma, noting the need for transformational change in Northern Ireland:

“Across the globe there is a shift taking place. We must move away from simply ticking boxes and focus on real transformation.

“New Script for Mental Health is launching this Give 5 initiative as we believe that while the Public Health Agency’s Take 5 campaign is helpful for individuals, on its own it’s not enough to tackle the mental health crisis here. We can’t have one without the other and believe that both initiatives need to work together. Failure by government to address the steps outlined in Give 5, and to instead place the focus solely on what individuals should do, runs the real risk of increasing feelings of blame and shame amongst individuals.

Rates of antidepressant prescribing are spiralling, with no apparent upper limit on spending, while talking therapies are a woefully underfunded, rationed resource. There is also an abject failure to learn from catastrophic mistakes. As people with firsthand experience have told us, mental health oversight and regulatory mechanisms are not fit for purpose. Simply doing more of the same will not address the underlying problems. Action is needed to stop failures happening again, to acknowledge lessons learned from elsewhere and to bring about systemic change before more lives are needlessly lost.”

Karen McGuigan, New Script activist from STEPS, Draperstown invited everyone present to endorse Give 5 and to email the Minister of Health, Mr. Mike Nesbitt MLA, calling on him to adopt Give 5.