Empowering People with Severe Mental Health Disease

The EMPOWER.Ment project introduces and ensures empowerment and inclusive support for people with severe mental health disease (SMHD), through preparation (training), mindset (toolkit) and supervision (guide) for volunteers, family/friends, professionals and students. The Empower.Ment project is co-funded by Erasmus Plus Programme of the European Union.

From inspiration to impact

The first output we are developing for the Empower.ment partnership is a methodological guide on EMPOWER.Ment: from inspiration to impact – a guide to incorporate the results into everyday life, clinical practice, support and services: A set of guidelines from it’s inspiration and creation, to it’s monitoring and evaluation, as well as presenting ways for volunteers, families, friends, trainees, students, professionals and peers who support and/or work with people with severe mental health difficulties, so as to:

• Become familiar with all features and elements of the project, severe mental health difficulties and inclusion
• Get to know all recent evidence and good practices that are related to inclusion in severe mental health difficulties
• Learn about available resources in the field of mental health through an inclusive point of view
• Understand how to practically incorporate this new approach in their practice while working/supporting people with severe mental health disease
• Network with organisations and/or people that have similar interests and experience
• Find peers and support through their everyday practice

At the same time, the guide can be useful to youth workers, trainers, professionals in mental healthcare, policy makers and other interested parties.

The guide is innovative in terms of Content information. All data on mental health attitudes, beliefs and inclusion through the percpective of the UNCRPD and latest scientific evidence is yet to be found in simple and totally comprehensive terms and language. We aim at forming documents that depict simple ways of addressing the needs of people with smhd in everyday life and activities. Introduction of a new way of talking about smhd practically through this guidelines. Introducing a new way of talking about mental health, no matter how severe the condition is considered to be, is a need for many researchers, professionals and people with lived experience, as well. The guide will be the first paradigm of incorporating the experience of the other two intellectual outputs of the project in real life/worklife. Simplicity in science. We aim at giving all information of science and evidence through a simple way, suitable for all, in order to be understood. Good practices that seem to work throughout Europe and/or internationally in including equally people with smhd in the activities and/or discussion that has to do with them. There is no precedent for that, yet, in a practical way. Although IMPACT is something to be measured on longterm level, the guide, as well as all outputs of this project, can have multiplier effects in mental health in the following field can be used as:

• Learning material to related courses for students, soon to be professionals
• Quality improvement tool for mental health services
• Policy making tool for mental health, connecting people with lived experience to the services provided to support them

We expect the guide to be used in volunteer groups, youth groups, in mental health services. The Empower.Ment website will have a special space for support networking the services and people who use the guide, so as to increase its impact.

Empower.Ment ActionPlans

The Empower.Ment partnership has started up two work groups around the Methodological guide on EMPOWER.Ment and the Toolkit “We say, You say, They say” – a glossary for a new inclusive approach in mental health support. The work groups have been working on action plans for the Guide and the Glossary. More news in our next articles.