By Ruairi White, NSUN CEO
We have been reflecting on the change we want to see in the world, and to understand how our work can enable it. This process has led to the creation of NSUN’s new Theory of Change, which we are proud to be sharing today.
The Theory of Change sets out our mission: to build a mental health justice movement, led by those with lived experience, to fight harmful systems and build better alternatives. In this blog, I’m going to talk about what I see as the current context in mental health, and how NSUN seeks to make a difference.
Where are we now?
NSUN was founded in 2007. Nearly 20 years later, there has been a massive sea-change in mental health. We have new language and new ways of discussing mental health. But in the UK the rate of psychological distress is higher than ever, and for many of us, accessing mental healthcare is not just difficult, but dangerous.
Something new is happening. The scale of the mental health crisis has become undeniable. It has finally become impossible to ignore what people with lived experience have been saying for years: awareness isn’t enough. In fact, increased awareness combined with austerity economics and a lack of care for patients’ and service users’ rights has produced a disastrous situation in which people are reaching out for mental health support which just isn’t there.
One of the ways the Government has tried to respond to this has been to stoke the myth of ‘overdiagnosis’ of common mental health problems and neurodiversity. The service user/survivor movement has been rightly critical of diagnoses and their risks, but the ‘overdiagnosis’ narrative frames the problem mostly as a failure of individual resilience. By implying that those who are struggling should all simply be better at coping with the ups and downs of life, people try to justify attacks on access to support, healthcare and social security.
This rhetoric has a hugely damaging effect on lived experience leadership. By blaming people with lived experience for our own distress, the idea of ‘overdiagnosis’ undermines our authority to speak about mental ill-health. It divides our movement, and it asks us to police each other. It makes it permissible to call us liars to our faces, with a smile, in the national media, most days of the week.
We are coming up against the limits of models for lived experience engagement built for the current, broken system. People are burnt out and tired. They’re often not sure of who their allies are, or what might be possible together. Nonetheless, change is happening. Calls for public health approaches to mental health are gathering momentum, and across our membership we can see the impacts of collective action for mental health.
We’re reaching a tipping point. The mental health landscape is changing. We need a strong, well-resourced movement for mental health justice, led by people with lived experience. That’s where NSUN comes in.
NSUN’s movement-building work
As the only lived experience-led national mental health charity in England, NSUN is uniquely placed to create a mental health justice movement that can fight against harmful systems and build better alternatives.
Our Capacity Building work resources the grassroots. Across our membership, there are groups of people creating spaces for user-led care and connection. These groups are often under-resourced and over-worked. Through offering training, networking and space to connect with other people doing similar work, we help people solve some of those problems. We also focus on systemic change, by tracking and challenging how the funding ecosystem disadvantages user-led and grassroots groups. Sometimes this includes offering grants. We’re looking forward to announcing a programme honouring the legacy of the youth-led mental health community Hearts & Minds, which will offer small grants to projects led by young people with lived experience.
Through our Policy & Campaigns work, we campaign at a national and local level for safe and consent-based healthcare, a better social security net, and an end to harmful policy agendas like austerity and the hostile environment. This includes directly supporting members to build and succeed in their own campaigns for change. You can get involved by attending our Mad Campaigns Lab sessions, or by reaching out to the team for direct support.
Building and sharing knowledge is essential to making change. Who gets to be an expert? Led by our Communications & Membership team, we platform lived experience perspectives which wouldn’t otherwise be heard through member-led blogs, research and reports. No one in our membership is ‘hard to reach’: our voices are many and loud, and we are determined to make them heard.
We’re working towards a world with a just approach to mental health, where we all have the freedom to give and receive care on our own terms. To do that, we will make sure that people with lived experience are connected, well-supported, and have the skills and knowledge necessary to fight for change. That’s what NSUN will be focusing on in the next five years. I hope you’re with us.
NSUN membership is free and open to people with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress or trauma, as well as grassroots user-led mental health groups. If you aren’t already a member, click here to join the movement today.
If you’d like to support our work, you can donate here.