An innovative project conceived by Mental Health Media, which will provide tools and resources to help people with experience of mental distress successfully challenge discrimination in their local communities, has received the funding it needs to go ahead.

Mental Health Medias two-year Anti Discrimination Tool Kit project has received substantial funding from the Community Fund, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, to a total sum of £573,403.00.

The first stage of the project will identify the most effective ways of combating discrimination and stigma, learning lessons from both current mental health campaigns and initiatives and other rights and anti-discrimination movements such as those around HIV/AIDS, race and broader disability issues.

The project team will then turn these findings into an anti-discrimination toolkit including a video, CD rom and website which will give service user/survivor groups the practical, hands-on advice, training and support they need to take action in their local areas.

People with mental health problems face discrimination in almost every area of their lives. Recent research by the Mental Health Foundation into stigma and discrimination found that 70% of people had experienced discrimination in response to their own mental distress or in response to that of a relative or friend. Only 19% of people with mental health problems are in work, the highest rate of unemployment amongst people with disabilities. Those who do work may also face discrimination: research from Mind in 1996 revealed that 34% of people had been dismissed or forced to resign from their job, and 38% had been harassed, intimidated or teased at work. In the same study, almost half of those surveyed (47%) had been abused or harassed in public, and 14% had been physically attacked.

However, despite the unfair treatment many face, the vast majority of people with mental health problems (91%) believe that discrimination can be reduced.

ends

Notes for Editors

For further details please contact Katie Brudenell or Kate Summerside on 020 7700 8171/8172

Mental Health Media is a voluntary organisation, which works with the media to promote peoples voices in order to reduce the discrimination and prejudice surrounding mental health and learning difficulties.

References

Pull Yourself Together A survey of the stigma and discrimination faced by people who experience mental distress. The Mental Health Foundation 2000

Office for National Statistics. Labour Force Survey, HMSO Autumn 1999

Mind, Read, J. & Baker, S., Not Just Sticks and Stones, A Survey of the Stigma, Taboos and Discrimination Experienced by People with Mental Health Problems 1996