First Do No Harm

I had intended this article to be an overview of EXCELLENCE as the first Community Mental Health Development Bank and how together we can pool our resources to pay for much needed unbiased research as well as recovery-focused programs.

I also wanted to make the appeal for becoming one of our $1 million dollar donors so we can continue building our endowment fund or tell how, for a much more modest contribution, you can help us achieve our $250K Challenge Grant.

Instead, I am going to focus on what I see as one of the most critical issues we are all facing which is underscored by the people I come in contact with on a daily basis. FIRST DO NO HARM. It doesn’t take a medical degree to understand the basic rule of care: help people, and if you can’t, at least don’t harm them. Of course. And yet, we the healers, people with lived experience, family members, public policy experts, and community members are so busy shooting at each other over what mental illness is or is not and how we ought to treat “it”, we have lost sight of our basic humanity and the suffering and compassion that are indivisible parts of the human experience. There are a lot of people in the world of mental health care who are showing compassion but not nearly enough. 

At the government level, legislatures, congress, and local county boards of commissioners sit back, pointing to the infighting amongst advocates and saying ‘come back and let us know what to fund when you can all agree on something’. Worse yet, in the absence of consensus legislation and funding, special interest groups and corporations profit while our civic leaders lose sight of the very people who need our help.

I know there are differences of opinion and that it can be hard to come to agreement, so I’m going to ask you to do three things.

1^st…….check out EXCELLENCE’s core beliefs:

We believe that…

• People experiencing distress remain people first and foremost and should be viewed and treated with respect (as opposed to being viewed and treated as diagnoses or cases).
• Recovery involves collaboration between the person in distress and their social and therapeutic network.
• The wellness model of care should be the norm. The current illness model should be challenged.
• The paradigm of recovery and well-being is the underpinning of all our initiatives.
• Individual informed choice and self-determination are critical ingredients for recovery.
• Children, young Adults and Seniors are particularly vulnerable.
• People are resilient.
• There is a global nature to mental health conditions.
• The medical model is not a useful way to understand mental health conditions and our healthcare payment structures are predicated on that model.
• Honest evaluation of medication risks and benefits should be shared openly.
• The role that alcohol, prescription medication abuse and illegal drugs play in damaging the lives of those with mental health challenges and their families must be addressed.
• Social and emotional distress is an essential, if difficult, dimension of human experience.
• Over the last half-century, there has been an over-medicalization of many forms of distress, which are now being addressed almost exclusively through the use of medications. Despite the limitations of this paradigm, the use of an increasingly narrow biomedical model is now overly influencing mental health practice across the globe.
• While medications may provide some symptom relief in the short-term, the assumption that their long term use is always effective is not supported by independent research. In fact, new research has found that long term medication use may impede sustained mental health recovery and optimal health.
• People can and do recover from mental health conditions, at times facilitated by, but at other times in spite of, current mental health services. Long-term disability is not inevitable and should be neither an expected nor an accepted result of mental health conditions.
• Recovery is primarily the work of the person in distress. EXCELLENCE values individual choice and fosters hope by appreciating the active and substantial involvement of the person in distress in all facets and phases of their own care and recovery, whether or not they choose to use medications.

2^nd……let us know what among these beliefs resonates with you. Tell your story and post comments on your Facebook page, on our Facebook page, write a blog, get involved in recovery dialogue, ask questions, be a part of the solution.

3^rd……give to EXCELLENCE at www.mentalhealthexcellence.org to continue the funding of recovery-based research and programs. Choose a fund to give to or give to the general fund for the Board of Directors to direct your support to the biggest need. You can also team up with others to create a new fund focused on what matters to you.

PAY IT FORWARD…….FIRST DO NO HARM

Mission

We connect the passion of private philanthropy with the world’s top researchers and programs to bring recovery-based care and supports to every community.