Welcome to the 22nd WCP Congress Program Scheduling

Abstract Body

Having a mental health problem affects all dimensions of life. Article 25 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities establishes that we must receive the best care possible. Unfortunately this does not happen. There are deficiencies of all kinds; lack of professionals, or psychological and psychosocial rehabilitation aid, but, above all, there´s a crucial need of an approach based on the Convention, which establishes that our situation must have a social perspective. Psychosocial disability is not just a medical problem. The barriers that we find are not faced from the perspective of the paradigm shift advocated by the convention. Article 29, “Right to Independent Living” is too often neglected or even ignored.
We are not "mentally ill", our essence is not the disease", this just a circumstance that does not have to be chronic. This is where the stigmatization and discrimination that we suffer arise, also unfortunately from care professionals in mental health.
For this reason, from first-person activism, we demand that our situation be addressed from the point of view of human rights in the first place, as subjects with rights and not as objects of care. If not, they will be left without contemplating the other facets claimed by the Convention. The suffering comes from the mental health problems themselves and from their terrible consequences in our lives; isolation, discrimination, not having economic self-sufficiency, housing, or rights... It´s an imperative to work all together.Our Voice has to be heard: Nothing about us without us!

Abstract Body

The active involvement of service users and their relatives and friends is essential for the development of recovery-oriented and rights-based mental health policy, practice and research. There is an urgent need for collaborations between mental health care users and user activists, family and informal carers, and mental health professionals and policy makers outside traditional clinical encounters. Trialogue groups are training grounds for working together on an equal basis in a context of non-discrimination. The Trialogue experience in German speaking countries is indicative of our capacity for surviving and gaining from discussions of adverse issues as well as the opportunities of cooperative efforts and coordinated action. International interest and experiences are growing fast. Data show that Trialogue groups facilitate a discrete and independent form of acquisition and production of knowledge and may go some way to tackling stigma and discrimination. They function as basis and starting points for trialogic activities on different levels - e.g. serving on quality control boards or teaching in trialogic teams - and different topics - e.g. a task force on stigma busting or a work group on reducing coercion. The currently often hidden knowledge of a large part of the community – namely that of families and friends of people with mental health problems as well as the expertise of those who are dealing with or have overcome such problems in their own lives – can be validated and shared for the benefit of all.