Let's fix the system - not the person!
Help us get the Department of Health to adopt Give 5: Steps to a Wellbeing Rights Framework.
Give 5: Steps to a Wellbeing Rights Framework focuses on what government and organisations can do to better tackle the mental health crisis. Take 5 Steps to Wellbeing is a public health campaign focusing on what individuals can do to improve their mental health. We can’t have one without the other.
Too often, people battling 'mental health' issues are made to feel like they are the problem. That there's something wrong with their brain, that they're weak, or that they haven't 'tried hard enough'. This only makes things worse.
We know that the world around us shapes us. Poverty, violence, discrimination, isolation and toxic cultures are often the real culprits. The evidence shows that there are serious failures in our systems causing devastating harm to individuals, families and communities. It's time for radical change. That time is now.
Give 5: Steps to a Wellbeing Rights Framework
People with lived experience, along with mental health workers, have created this rights-based framework. It outlines 5 steps which government bodies and organisations can act on to address the 'mental health' crisis.
Quick fixes and band-aid solutions might look good, but don't address the real issues. It's not just about more resources, but how and where the money is spent. We call on the government to adopt this framework and need your help.
Keep Learning from the failures of previous policy and practice, challenging organisational cultures of secrecy, defensiveness, and blame. Support people's right to openness, honesty, and accountability.
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Without accountability, human rights lack enforcement and are rendered meaningless. Governments and other actors are accountable to rights-holders, and mechanisms need to be established to define clear responsibilities, to measure and monitor progress, and to engage with rights-holders to improve policymaking.Mental health, human rights, and legislation: guidance and practice. WHO & United Nations, 2023.
Accountability is a core principle of a human rights-based approach to mental health. It requires government to actively ensure a range of elements are in place, including transparent data, participatory mechanisms, monitoring, review, remedies, and methods of redress.
For families who have suffered harm within mental health services, at the heart of their efforts to establish accountability must be three interlinked rights: the right to truth, the right to justice and the right to an effective remedy and reparation.
However, many families in Northern Ireland have experienced and continue to experience the most egregious failures of accountability in mental health services. There has been no accountability for preventable deaths. Preventable deaths continue to occur.
People are experiencing harm within services, both community mental health and in-patient services. Families' experiences are being ignored or minimised. An organisational culture of secrecy, defensiveness and blame prevents lessons being learnt, so the same catastrophic failures continue to occur.
Profoundly serious issues exist in relation to mental health data. These issues have been highlighted by a number of bodies, including the Office for Statistics Regulation, the NI Audit Office, and the NI Assembly's Public Accounts Committee.
Without the availability of timely, accurate, reliable, coherent, and comparable data, it is impossible to plan services effectively, to assess outcomes or to ensure value for public money being spent.
Oversight mechanisms are not fit for purpose. They are not truly independent from government as is required. Review recommendations, for example, in relation to Serious Adverse Incidents (SAIs) are not being implemented.
You will find links below to a range of evidence sources that support Step 3: Take Notice. This is drawn from both international and local levels, including the United Nations and WHO, academic journals and books, parliamentary and NGO reports, alongside analysis by New Script for Mental Health.
Further links will be added on an ongoing basis.
Act now to endorse Give 5
Use the form below to show your support, as either an individual or an organisation. Additionally, you can choose to send an email to the Minister for Health, Mike Nesbitt, to urge him to endorse Give 5 too!.