Hi all, so I wanted to quickly bring in an opportunity for partnerships and ask you if you can recommend other organisations?
Ireland has high rates of people dealing with mental health, poor system care, and the aftercare system is broken, to paraphrase someone. There is a group who wants to start a community led care movement. The project includes a physical centre for peer supported recovery and a larger platform combining activities for welless with music&culture and with sustainability.
in short, they “will offer person centred, community based, recovery focused supports which will enable every member of the community, with or without a diagnosis of a mental health difficulty, to access the supports which will enable and enhance their own unique and individual personal development to the point of freedom from distress and robust resilience. The group behind the centre comprise people with lived experience of mental health difficulties, family members/carers and mental health professionals who will be on tap when their expertise is required rather than in control of the recovery process of individuals. The services will be co-developed by people with personal and professional experience of mental health difficulties.” (also see doc attached)
They have already trained a body of people which they call “qualified peer supporters”.
They have preliminary support for a prototype: an initial 3 months space in the Arts Museum building.
They would greatly benefit from the OpenCare support to say that a Brussels funded project is already on board + looking for others - could we maybe recommend them:
evaluation&monitoring partners (SCIMPulse)?
sustainability research (Stockholm?) & fundraising/application writing (?)
visibility - (ER storytelling + maybe show up at launch later in summer if they will make it?)
anyone else that we can bring in?
Any ideas would be welcome. It’s still preliminary stage but any sign of support will be appreciated. I can offer more info by email, and send you a more detailed description.
I will be doing more research here on the ground but only in about 3 weeks, so I’ll be able to contribute more info and maybe a thorough story to support students move along in their work. or if anyone is interested in contributing we can couple them with someone in the group to do an interview? I may be able to make a connection.
San Francisco has always been a place where suicides are more frequent. One long-held theory is that some people go west in hopes a change of scene will improve things and when it doesn’t there is nowhere else to go. Another curious statistic, though probably unrelated to anything but still interesting, is that pretty much all of the people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge do it facing the bay and city rather than on the side facing the open ocean.
Actually towns on the coast don’t necessarily rank first… but the country overall, hm. I’ve been reading a lot but really hard to say - they’ve taken a serious hit after 2008 recession and this is coupled with the culture - people are not so used to sharing and expressing vulnerability it seems. But can you say this with so much more certainty than about other cultures…?
It’s probably a mix between context, culture, and systemic inability to respond. Apparently up until recently this was an elephant in the room. Anyway, I feel a little weird writing about this here and not being legitimate to offer an opinion, just reads and hearsay. But hopefully more to come, I would really like the edgeryders I’m meeting in Galway to join us soon.