Advocacy, Peer Collaboration at Center of International Efforts
Mental Health Weekly May 21, 2012
In a move to establish and build international collaborations between consumer advocates in the United States and consumers with mental illness
in Ghana and Kenya, a nonprofit organization in the United States is networking and promoting cross-cultural learning opportunities, grassroots
advocacy and peer support.
Through the use of Skype, webinars, conference calling and international site visits, BasicNeeds US is providing technical assistance, advocacy and financial support to consumers with mental illness and their families in Ghana and Kenya and ultimately helping them live and work successfully in their own communities, said organization officials.
“The goal is to increase awareness that there is a universal struggle with the stigma of mental illness,” Richard Dougherty, Ph.D., founder of BasicNeeds US, told MHW. “It happens regardless of resources and culture. We demonstrate that peer support and a self-help strategy are
effective models with low- and middle-income countries.”
Dougherty, who is also CEO of DMA Health Strategies, a health management firm, founded Basic-Needs US in 2008. The organization partnered with BasicNeeds UK, a 10-year program in 11 low-income countries and one in the United Kingdom, and considered the largest international program dedicated to people with mental disorders, said Dougherty.
BasicNeeds US received a $12,000 grant from OptumHealth to support the organization’s International Peer Support Collaboration – an exchange of knowledge and experience between peer support specialists from the United States and mental health advocates in Ghana and Kenya, Dougherty noted.
Last August, BasicNeeds US held a webinar with the Mental Health Society of Ghana (MeHSOG) and consumer advocates in the United States during which representatives from the New York Office of Mental Health, OptumHealth, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and MindFreedom, a nonprofit human rights organization, were introduced to the work of BasicNeeds Ghana and MeHSOG, Dougherty said.
BasicNeeds US’s international local development partners work with community health centers in Ghana and Kenya to help provide access to medications for consumers with mental health disorders, said Dougherty. “We work to increase support of the medications, but along with that we help build and develop self-help strategy [approaches] for them,” he said.
Dougherty added, “We call it capacity building – a focus on individuals and family members to help themselves and to help the community identify their [healthrelated] needs.”
“As we raise awareness about stigma in the community, consumers in those countries begin to see the importance of advocacy and the need to change things for themselves,” he said. “You build hope and the desire for improvement; you empower them,” said Dougherty. “It goes way beyond our capacity to help them.”
The New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation (NYAPRS) is lending its support to consumers in Ghana by sharing ideas about grassroots advocacy and peer support, said Harvey Rosenthal, NYAPRS executive director. “Advocacy, peer support and economic self-sufficiency, for us, are the building blocks of recovery,” Rosenthal told MHW.
NYAPRS has been in touch with the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University, an organization that advances public policy and employment support for persons with disabilities, to help address employment issues for the international population with mental illness, said Rosenthal.
“In general, BasicNeeds US is a terrific program which seeks to help people and support the peer movement and recovery movement in Ghana to address stigma and the need for employment and recovery that we all experience,” said Rosenthal.
Supporting youth
BasicNeeds US has also helped to link the U.S.- based Youth MOVE National with an emerging youth advocacy movement in Kenya called One Mind, Lend Your Voice, said Dougherty. Youth MOVE is a national advocacy organization of young adults, similar to organizations such as the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) and Mental Health America (MHA), he said.
BasicNeeds US last October helped to support a youth leadership summit in Kenya. During the summit, youth discussed leadership, entrepreneurism, mental health issues and responsibility for one’s own health, Dougherty said. Part of the OptumHealth grant funding supported facilitation of the all-day discussion about mental health, he added.
“With these kinds of small steps, a truly international movement can grow and be sustained,” said Dougherty.