The Global Mental Health Peer Network

Abstract

The Global Mental Health Peer Network is a global mental health-care user organization that operates as a global network of persons living with mental health conditions and mental disorders (lived experience), through a well-established and sustainable structure, that supports the recovery and person-centered approach to mental health. The Global Mental Health Peer Network is built on the premise of an integrated and holistic response to mental health care and services that incorporates and considers the medical, social, and human rights models and acknowledges that mental health conditions and mental disorders is multidimensional and affects individuals in all aspects of their lives and at all stages of life and cannot be dealt with solely as a medical problem. The Global Mental Health Peer Network promotes the roles of persons with lived experience through research, reducing stigma and discrimination, providing peer support, in consultative roles and participation in the development, design, review, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of mental health care and services. An integral focus of the Global Mental Health Peer Network aims to strengthen the partnership between persons with lived experience with mental health conditions, professionals, researchers, policy makers, governments, and other stakeholders – especially where persons with lived experience with mental health conditions had been excluded from or had not had the opportunity to be involved in such partnerships. The Global Mental Health Peer Network further strives toward enhancing the “voices” of people with lived experience through creating a platform where their needs, challenges, views, opinions, and perspectives are raised and incorporated into policy and plans for mental health.