PRESS RELEASE
Issued: 23/9/09
For the week beginning 5th October
Title: The Creative Journey to Recovery
Artwork on the theme of ‘Recovery’ goes on display this week in four GP surgeries around Ceredigion to celebrate World Mental Health Day this year.
World Mental Health Day on October 10th is an annual campaign to draw attention to the need to “make mental issues a global priority”. This year’s theme is ‘Mental Health and Primary Care: Enhancing Treatment and Promoting Mental Health’.
One in four of us will experience some kind of common mental health problem each year. Many will seek help from their GP and primary care team and will be given the help they need or put in touch with other sources of support. For other people it may be a longer struggle and the journey of recovery from their experience can be ongoing. People from local mental health groups wanted to reach out to others with a message of hope – that Recovery is possible. They have done this through their artistic responses on the theme of ‘Recovery’ which will be on display in the week of 5th October at Meddygfa Emlyn, Cardigan Health Centre and Tanyfron, Aberaeron and Ystwyth Medical Centre.
This project has been supported by the Ceredigion Service User Involvement Worker and Mind Your Heart. The ‘Ceredigion Recovery Book’, which was published in March, is available in English and in Welsh through existing organisations working for mental health and in local libraries. It can also be bought through Mind Your Heart and local bookshops.
Notes to Editors
- For more information contact Jan Batty, Mind Your Heart on 01570 423957, mobile 07875 206777 or jan.batty@nphs.wales.nhs.uk or Gill Pirie, Service User Involvement Worker on 01239 712811 or 0779 0234116 or wwamh_userinvolvement@yahoo.co.uk
- The Ceredigion Service User Involvement Project is a partnership project of local mental health organisations managed by West Wales Action for Mental Health.
- Mind Your Heart was set up in 2005 to improve the physical health of people with mental health problems in Ceredigion. It is a partnership of organisations including West Wales Action for Mental Health, Ceredigion Public Health Team and Ceredigion Local Health Board.
- The Ceredigion Recovery Book is available from Mind Your Heart at a cost of £5.
- Photos are available from Gill Pirie after 5th October.
Our March event was about concerns with the 2007 Amendment to the 1983 Mental Health Act Amendment, to which Paul Davies, AM, and Angela Burns, AM, were invited. People were angry and offended that an apparent connection was being drawn between paedophilia and mental health. It was agreed that child abusers should not be denied society’s help but our mental health community was not the appropriate place for this to be managed.
Concern was expressed that the public and media will tar with the same brush those with mental health problems and child abusers, and that twenty years of anti-stigma work is pushed backwards.
Child abuse is the root cause of mental health problems for many people, and the inclusion of perpetrator and victim under the same legislation is deeply offensive. Would abusers start to use mental health as a defence in court and thus encourage the media to make a connection?
Service users/carers found the medical model recognition (as described in ICD-10, and DSM-4) of paedophilia as a recognised disorder abhorrent.
Letters were sent out to raise awareness of this problem and we have had helpful responses from Angela Burns, AM, the Health Minister Edwina Hart, AM and Bill Walden-Jones from Hafal.
After raising awareness of the problem, the consensus of opinion is that there is little more we can do now except be vigilant as to how the courts respond to.