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Regulated mental health professionals with mental health difficulties experience stigma and exclusion in their own mental health systems: it's been shamed and silenced. Considering these dynamics, it's unsurprising to hear of failed 'co production' attempts./1 https://twitter.com/tamar_whyte/status/1387803494313340928
Mental health systems don't know how to value and 'do work' with those with mental health difficulties, they only attempt to know how to 'give care'; two different things./2
Staff lived experience networks can be surprised at finding themselves becoming 'watchdogs' and snagging their own Trust policies; we're not surprised, it's a sign they're actually working, the system isn't fit for purpose/3
The problem is threaded through the whole system, whoever you are who embodies the 'mental health problem' is at risk of suffering a certain type of denigration and scapegoating.../4
because people and the systems they create fear mental health problems, this has been imbued in our society for centuries, with consequences of exclusion and structural disadvantage./5
This is why the well-being agenda doesn't get close. We need to resolve the problem of stigma, that's a huge job and can really only be forwarded by the visibility of those with lived experience. Staff 'wellbeing' is a tiny part of a much bigger landscape./5
The day we really challenge all of our stigmatised views/policies on what it means for a work colleague to have mental health difficulties, is the day we'll start getting somewhere in the movement of professionals with lived experience, patient leadership & co-production alike./6
Maybe someday our efforts of campaigning for attitude/policy change from within each area, will hit a glorious threshold and we'll have a new horizon of equality in our hands./7
At the moment, it feels like we're tunnelling in towards a similar goal of being valued for our lived experience, in the face of structural discrimination, from separate spaces. Here at in2gr8, we very much hope to meet and support each others' good energy./8
This has been arising as grass roots energy, which, despite personal cost to those involved, does actually have gathering power as these roots work together. At some point It'll leave normal lines of power (top-down) somewhat neutered in the face of compelling press for change/9
Til then, nourish, nourish, nourish and rest in between laser-like focus and stamina on raising the nub of this issue./10
To all those striving for parity of esteem between colleagues with and without lived experience of mental health difficulties, we hear you, we understand the sacrifice and the pain and the hope, and we send our allyship in this work./ 11
