ENUSP Empowerment Seminar day 1

Today, Sunday 8 December 2013, I arrived in Bucharest, Romania in the afternoon, after over 12 hours of travelling and again a night without sleeping. (it took 3 busses, 2 trains and 1 airplane to get from Eindhoven, the Netherlands to Bucharest, Romania). But I am here now, and it is great.

I am here for the Empowerment Seminar of ENUSP (European Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, www.enusp.org) which is held from 8-10 December 2013 in Hotel Ibis Gara De Nord Bucharest.
This event is made possible with support from Mental Health Europe (MHE, www.mhe-sme.org ) under the European Commission Progress Programme with assistance of the Romanian Orizonturi Foundation (http://orizonturi.org)

It is really great to see my European colleagues again. Most of us arrived in the afternoon. I arrived around 15.00, and then I had a refreshing shower, and at 16.30 the meeting started in the Brahms room at the first floor.
We, participants, were welcomed by Piotr Iwaneyko (chair of ENUSP) and Gabriela Tanasan (core organizer). They explained the program and elaborated on the goals of the seminar. We are to discuss in the next days what is important for ENUSP as an organization, what is our strategy for empowerment and which are key areas of action.

First Piotr explained to us a bit more about the situation of ENUSP in the past year. There have been some resignations and as a consequence there have been some changes in the Board of ENUSP. There hasn’t been much communication within ENUSP lately (except for organizing the seminar). There still is no funding for ENUSP, so there are very few resources. Basically ENUSP consists of motivated volunteers, who are doing a great job both locally as internationally. It is still not easy to organize ENUSP.
At the previous Empowerment Seminar in Zagreb we made a detailed action plan, but still a lot remains to be done. How can we make ENUSP better? How can we continue and become more efficient? Those are the key questions for this current Empowerment Seminar.

We talked about what had changed since the 1990s, since ENUSP came into existence. Back then, ENUSP was the first international European user organization and used to be very visible and active. By now we are not the only European movement anymore. There is a growing number of diagnosis-based organizations, which are sometimes really medically-oriented and not really promoting the social model of disability. This contributes to fragmentation and causes a hard time for ENUSP as European movement, which sticks to the human rights-approach (social model).
In fact, MHE and ENUSP are basically the only European organizations in the field of mental health that absolutely get no funding from pharmaceutical industry (unlike for example Gamian, which is a European user and family organization that does take money from pharmaceutical industry).

In the break time, I had a very interesting discussion on various dynamics we face in practice, such as many good ideas being “stolen” from the user movement and taken over by others (and then we are replaced and excluded again). Many good practices based on user-initiatives have already been taken over and deformed into clinical psychiatric practices (such as the Swedish Personal Ombudsman versus “state-advocates” who claim they can do the same, or the first European movement ENUSP, which also got copied by institutional organizations (pharma-based), who now have more resources than us). Also with my own initiative, the project of Family Group Conferencing to avoid forced psychiatric treatments, I need to make many efforts with the health care workers not to be “left out”. The tendency to exclude us is a reality for us.

So, getting back to the main discussion, ENUSP is currently not at its best: there is a lack of resources and a lot of work to be done in terms of continuing the network. Some members of ENUSP find it hard to witness ENUSP being in such a “crisis”. (“as if the love of my life is dying – I can’t face it”). But we have to acknowledge the trouble to be able to act to it. There is work to do. We all feel there is a high need for an active European network ENUSP, and we are motivated to overcome the issues by strategic actions, which we are discussing at this Empowerment Seminar.

During the self-introduction of the participants it became clear that there are also some positive developments, such as in Denmark where the government wants to reduce the use of force by 50% in 7 years. It is great when a government sets such a goal (which happened after a lot of advocacy of course). It is great to see results. That is empowering. Also many participants were impressed by my 2-minute presentation on the pilot project of my alternative to avoid forced psychiatric treatments by using Family Group Conferencing (for info on FGC see www.fgcnetwork.eu ).

Then Kristijan Grdjan told us some more about MHE (Mental Health Europe). It appears that MHE is losing 80% of its funding after 2013 (their main project proposal was rejected and not granted), which means that quite some staff has to go, and MHE won’t be able to support ENUSP’s next Empowerment Seminar financially. This means we have to think about other donors, other constructions, and another way forward. So ENUSP is truly in Transition.
Also MHE will have to secure their existence during the next period. We talked about options of doing joint projects, such as for example a European project on Family Group Conferencing in mental health care, with pilot regions and research (such a project was already on my mind). ENUSP could be guiding and MHE could be of practical support. This might be a way to go. ENUSP and MHE have already proven to be good partners and cooperators.

We also talked about some other organizations and discussed the relationships with these, such as EDF (European Disability Forum), EPF (European Patient Forum) and EPHA (European Public Health Alliance)

After that the dinner was already waiting for us at the restaurant downstairs. It was very nice and cosy. Basically, we kept on discussing mental health issues, as true-hearted human rights activists.
Then a guy came to our table, to ask if we, Stephanie, Kristijan and I, wanted to drink coffee with him for free as a part of his challenge. He appeared to be in a marketing-training in the other meeting room at the first floor (it seemed to be a kind of pyramid-sales). Anyway, he had a package of coffee with Malaysian Mushroom-extract in it, and he offered to make for us. But we were not so serious anymore, and the entire situation became hilarious. We laughed a lot, and in the end we drank the coffee and he was pretending to be Dracula. :D lol!

After this coffee-experience, Stephanie, Kristijan and I went out to the train station to get cigarettes and something to drink for in the hotel room, and when we returned we decided to have a nice drink in the hotel bar. We sat there for quite some time, and we had very interesting talks. It was a very nice evening.

By now it’s almost 2 pm, and I should get some rest (I cannot afford to miss another night of sleep). It is great to be here, and it so utterly interesting to speak with all the other users/survivors of psychiatry from various European countries. We have so much in common, and we can learn so much from each other. Every minute is interesting, and being here all together is very inspiring and empowering on itself. So after half a day of meeting, the ENUSP Empowerment Seminar is already a great experience. :)
Goodnight!