Global Initiative on Psychiatry - Sofia

1. Global Initiative on Psychiatry - Sofia Our vision is that every person should have the opportunity to realise his or her full potential as a human being, notwithstanding personal vulnerabilities or life circumstances. Paving a way towards social inclusion of people with mental illness…

2. We have proved experience in sensitising and involving the main stakeholders, bringing together the variety of perspectives – the user, the relative, the professional and the governmental one. Global Initiative on Psychiatry (GIP) is an international not-for-profit organisation for the promotion of humane, ethical and effective mental health care worldwide. Employing the 29-year experience of GIP-Holland, GIP-Sofia has been working since 2002 in the South East European (SEE) region to support the mental health reforms.

3. GIP-Sofia has established excellent working relationships with central and local government and authorities. The organisation has been taking an active part in designing national and municipal strategies in the sphere of social policies and mental health, thus emerging as a key propeller of change.

4. GIP –Sofia is also responsible for maintenance of a regional network and collaboration with partners from Albania, Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Romania by hosting annual South-Eastern Europe Mental Health Forums, managing flexible small grants scheme, supporting projects in the field of Mental Health in Albania and Moldova.

5. GIP-Sofia was the agent who introduced the practice of patients’ councils in Bulgaria in order to: • organise the users’ voice in a meaningful way; • empower users as an equal partner in the process of their own treatment; • set up a mechanism for monitoring the quality & influencing the management of mental health services, performed by the users

6. The introduction of Crisis Card concept in Bulgarian setting is another example of GIP-Sofia’s work towards recognising the significance of the voice of mental health users and encouraging their active collaboration with mental health professionals. Crisis Card aims to set up a mechanism for humane provision of services, consonant with the needs of people with mental illness, based on involving the latter in the process of their treatment. Crisis Card is an excellent example of the professional & carer & user trialogue.

7. GIP-Sofia has extensive experience in training of professionals, users and relatives, thus building their skills and improving their capacity to carry out reforms in the field of mental health care. To date, few universities in SEE offer programmes, that include training in the fields of Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Psychiatric Nursing. To compensate for this gap in training, in 2003 GIP-Sofia organised an international conference, resulting in the establishment of a nursing network for CEE and NIS countries. GIP-Sofia also developed sustainable training programmes: Master programme in PSR in the South West University and specialisation in PN in the Medical College in Blagoevgrad.

8. GIP-Sofia has also proved its competence in public awareness campaigns. GIP-Sofia is among the founders (in April 2004) and is coordinating the Anti-stigma coalition: alliance of experts working in the field of mental health in Bulgaria, representatives of the government administration, NGO`s, service users and their relatives and media. • The foundation has organised a number of training workshopsfor journalists, which has raised knowledge, interest, and empathy to mental health problems and has tangibly affected local media coverage of the latter in a positive way. In some of these seminars mental health users served the capacity of trainers.

9. Being the founder of the first national user organisations in Bulgaria, Albania and Moldova, GIP-Sofia is in traditionally good relationship with the movements of users of mental health services in the region, advocating for their interests and supporting their initiatives.GIP-Sofia actively assisted in the establishment ofthethird national users’ organisation in Bulgaria.One of the aspects of theseactions was to show the “face” of the person, staying behind the diagnosis and proving his/her abilities and potential. The book “Anthology of User Art”, published by GIP-Sofia, is a collection of paintings, poems and essays of people with mental disability.

10. Photo & personal stories exhibition, named “Living with severe psychiatric illness: our past, our present”

11. A core part of GIP-Sofia’s work embraces activities, which aim at securing competitive employment for people with mental illness by developing and implementing vocational rehabilitation programmes and introducing supported employment schemes. • Training seminars for employers, labour agencies and the national Labour Office Directorates • Social enterprise and rehabilitation (Public laundry)

12. GIP-Sofia’s follow-up plans in the Experts by Experience perspective • Establishing a Resource Centre for expert by experience • Participation of experts by experience as counsellors with different government and regional bodies