Mental Health Advocacy

A Mental Health Advocate provides practical support enabling individuals with mental health needs or distress to make informed choices, be represented and to obtain services they may require, which could include:

Housing

Health needs

Support on ward rounds

Combating discrimination

Care & treatment issues

Mental health act tribunals

Making complaints

This might mean support for writing letters, phone calls, attending meetings, and finding appropriate support organisations or services.

Mental Health Advocates are on you side, not making decisions for you, and enabling you to have your views and wishes heard.

Self-advocacy

If you are not being listened to, or been discriminated against or found barriers to accessing information or services, self-advocacy can empower you directly to ‘speak up’ for yourself. Someone else isn’t required to ‘speak up’ on your behalf.

By learning skills and practicing them to get your views known and acted upon, self-advocacy skills training can enable you to take direct control over your own recovery and assert your rights.

The self-advocacy skills training via CoolTan Arts/Comic Relief will be designed particularly with mental health service user/survivor participants.

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