By Claudia Esteve
Walking the Path: Engaging, Supporting, and Collaborating.
The JAEC Foundation was launched in November 2019. Although Covid-19 hit us around March 2020, surprising the whole world and making humanity adapt to new ways of relating, connecting, and communicating, it has not stopped us from going forward and achieving many of our goals.
During the past 12 months, we have supported and collaborated with inspiring projects and organizations that are changing psychiatry’s landscape. There is no doubt that the mainstream bio-medical model is transitioning to a more humane and compassionate mental health care model.
A drop of water in the Ocean: We trust that the support we offer to those communities and alternative treatment centers and all those professionals in Psychiatry working to make a change for the better, makes a difference.
There is a path, many are committed to changing the mainstream mental health care system, and there is hope.
Together, supporting each other, we can go forward.
S P O N S O R I N G : Overview of projects supported by JAEC in Switzerland
Geneva Prize for Human Rights in Psychiatry, 2020
The Geneva Prize for Human Rights in Psychiatry is granted every three years to a person, an institution, or an association (governmental or non-governmental) that has distinguished itself by making a significant contribution to advancing human rights in psychiatry.
For the next edition of the Geneva Prize (postponed to 2021 for health reasons), the JAEC Foundation has submitted the candidacy of Dr. Birgitta Alakare, a pioneer in the Open Dialogue approach, recommended by the WHO as a good practice in mental health care. Dr. Alakare dared to think beyond traditional psychiatry by allowing all concerned to express themselves equitably and creating a democratic team-force that has achieved the best results in the Western world in treating psychosis for the past 30 years.
The JAEC Foundation is honored to support this nomination and actively participates in recognizing directions and contributions that can advance psychiatry worldwide.
Maïeutique Institute
The Institut Maïeutique welcomes adolescents and adults suffering from psychological difficulties and requiring care in a structured therapeutic framework. There are two types of reception. On the one hand, a daycare hospital aims to promote recovery and the acquisition of greater autonomy with a view to social, educational, and professional reintegration. On the other hand, various living spaces spread throughout the city of Lausanne. The people appointed can be in a protected regime (continuous accompaniment), semi-protected (partial accompaniment), or autonomous.
This distribution allows patients to benefit from personalized care, promoting progressive autonomy by moving from one structure to another. Accommodation helps to restore rhythm to the management and organization of daily life.
In these reception places, a dialogue is essential between the patient and the multidisciplinary team that oversees the care process through psychotherapeutic, psychosocial, and rehabilitation activities. The whole process develops in a spirit of accompaniment rather than an indoctrination.
Humanity and respect for others in a spirit of benevolence are central values at the Institut Maïeutique. JAEC brings financial support, not for a particular action but to support the Institute according to the projects requiring additional help.
Parenthesis Paccot-Dessus
The JAEC Foundation supports the association “Parenthèse Paccot-Dessus” and its project of renovating original chalets in the Swiss alps’ beautiful landscape. The project embodies the core values of the JAEC foundation: Justice, Action, Education, and Compassion.
By giving people struggling with a complicated life-path the opportunity to find peace in nature and reintegrate through a meaningful contribution to society, the “Parenthèse Paccot-Dessus” association embodies a double mission: Supporting young and old people in mental distress and safeguarding the regional heritage.
In parallel to the working in nature (animal care, woodworking, beekeeping, masonry, etc.), these citizens can benefit from a meaningful interlude that allows them to have the necessary significant crucial fundamental awareness and distance for a new start.
The association makes its premises available and leaves the responsibility of supervising the residents to professionals. The association’s resources are used exclusively for the specific needs intended for the restoration of the chalets.
The Therapeutic Gardens Project
Therapeutic gardens are usually part of a medical structure. It is not the case here, thus constituting its originality: The Therapeutic Gardens of the Tour-de-Peilz are handled autonomously. They are part of a local project, at a human scale, and managed by a peer helper.
To offer a different, free, and unencumbered place of welcome to people facing challenges to their mental health, the Therapeutic Gardens of Tour-de-Pliez is foremost a place for sharing and conviviality.
It is common knowledge that there are many benefits linked to gardening, such as stimulation and rehabilitation of our functions, which promote a sense of accomplishment, peace, and self-esteem.
JAEC supports this project because it embodies compassion in a very down-to-earth manner: While gardening, these people feel supported and have a common purpose.
Free Psy Talk Online Group
The JAEC Foundation hosts an online support group for psychiatry clients who are part of the crazy silly wise magick community. Facilitated by Natasa Arvova, a helping pair with lived experience, the Free Psy Talk Group offers an alternative space where psychiatric clients and concerned professionals can exchange thoughts and reflections in the field of mental health based on their life experience.
Thus, this community’s struggles and quests are shared in a safe space, where each voice is considered to have equal value.
JAEC supports this activity because it offers a safe and friendly space for those who wish to share their lived experience and exchange information freely. The online Free Psy Talk group is destined for the adult public.
S P O N S O R I N G : Overview of projects supported by JAEC abroad
- El Llindar, Spain.
El Llindar is a space that promotes ending cyclical educational failures of teenagers alienated from the educational and social system. A space that offers qualified formation and work-study programs to the students; guiding, accompanying, and supporting their transition into adult life.
In El Llindar each student, each teenager, is considered unique and receives a tailored education. Everyone is taught research, participation, and the value of mutual growth.
Problems become opportunities for reflection, incentivizing creativity, and pedagogical innovation.
The relational dynamics of El Llindar are based on affective bonds; listening, trusting, and not rushing. All students are given the time and space they need.
- Inner Fire Healing Community, U.S.A.
Inner Fire is a proactive healing community offering a choice for adults to recover from debilitating and traumatic life challenges without the use of psychotropic medications.
We are not anti-medication but rather believe in the choice to find inner balance and healing without the challenging side effects of psychotropic medications. With the help of a psychiatrist and our comprehensive program which calls upon the engagement of the whole human being, we assist people who long to carefully taper to a satisfactory level, who want to avoid medications altogether, or who need support while dealing with the withdrawal symptoms having discontinued their benzodiazepines or other medications
“As our consciousness shifts from that of victim to that of creator, the process of tapping untapped wells within our innermost self leads to healing. For some people, medications interfere with such engagement and growth.”
Beatrice Birch, Founder
- International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal (IIPDW)
The IIPDW aims to:
–Develop research and practice-based knowledge that will facilitate the safe reduction of and withdrawal from psychiatric drugs.
–Contribute to evidence-based practices for the reduction of and withdrawal from psychiatric drugs, and facilitate their inclusion in general practice guidelines.
–Support the human right to informed choice with regard to psychiatric drugs.
–Promote practices that help families, friends, and practitioners support the safe reduction of and withdrawal from psychiatric drugs and take into account relational and social aspects essential to this process.
- Mad in America
Mad in America’s mission is to serve as a catalyst for rethinking psychiatric care in the United States (and abroad). The current drug-based paradigm of care has failed our society and calls for profound change.
MIA’s non-profit organization promotes such change mainly through two vehicles:
–The webzine madinamerica.com, that provides news of psychiatric research, original journalism articles, and a forum for an international group of writers to explore issues related to this goal of “remaking psychiatry.”
–Mad in America Continuing Education, which hosts online courses taught by leading researchers in the field. These courses provide a scientific critique of the existing paradigm of care, and tell of alternative approaches that could serve as the foundation for a new paradigm, primarily marketing the courses to provider organizations and mental health professionals, including psychiatrists.
Through this mix of journalism, MIA aims to provoke an education and societal discussion which could provide the seed for a much-needed reconstruction of mental health care in the United States. Promoting a health care model that emphasizes our common humanity and psychosocial care, robust, long-term recovery and wellness, and de-emphasizing the use of psychiatric medications, particularly over the long-term.
- Open Dialogue
Foundation Training Programmes: Open dialogoue UK co-ordinate the first full Open Dialogue training program to be run outside of Finland.
What is the Open Dialogue approach?
The Open Dialogue approach is both a philosophical/theoretical approach to people experiencing a mental health crisis and their families/networks and a system of care, developed in Western Lapland in Finland over the last 35 years. In the 1980s psychiatric services in Western Lapland were in a poor state, in fact, they had one of the worst incidences of the diagnosis of schizophrenia’ in Europe. Now they have the best-documented outcomes in the Western World. For example, around 75% of those experiencing psychosis have returned to work or study within 2 years and only around 20% are still taking antipsychotic medication at a 2-year follow-up.
Whilst it is clear that the full three year training is central to the development of Open Dialogue within services, we also feel that it is important to offer shorter training programmes in order to help the approach develop more widely within services. Participants will learn the essential skills for starting to use the approach. Our foundation training in London consists of five blocks of 4 days spread over the course of the year. This training is led by senior Finnish trainers as well as other leading international practitioners/trainers. Independent practitioners and peers are also welcome onto this program.
http://opendialogueapproach.co.uk/
- National Empowerment Center, U.S.A.
The mission of NEC is to carry a message of recovery, empowerment, hope and healing to people with lived experience with mental health issues, trauma, and and/or extreme states.
As a consumer/survivor/expatient-run organization, NEC carrys out its mission with authority, as each of us is living a personal journey of recovery and empowerment. At NEC they are convinced that recovery and empowerment are not the privilege of a few exceptional leaders, but rather are possible for each person with lived experience. Whether on the back ward of a state mental institution or working as an executive in a corporation, they want people who are mental health consumers/survivors/expatients to know there is a place to turn to in order to receive the information they might need in order to regain control over their lives and the resources that affect their lives. That place is the National Empowerment Center.
NEC staff speak at conferences, both large and small. NEC workshops include the eCPR Training workshops, the Hearing Voices Workshop (see the NEC store for details), as well as workshops focusing on trauma, women’s issues in mental health, recovery strategies, alternative/complimentary services and re-visioning mental health systems on a recovery model.
- Compassion for Addiction
The question is not: Why the addiction?
The question is: Why the pain?
The mission of CfA is to change the way people view and understand addiction through the combined methodologies of compassion and cutting-edge science. The aim is to promote the understanding that addiction is the attempt of affected human beings to escape a profound discomfort with themselves and their world.
Cofounder Dr. Gabor Maté’s approach to addiction is based on decades of research and experience working with addicts. He speaks about the social roots of our addictions and how the problem is caused neither by genes nor ‘choices’, but in the lives and experiences of the addicts.
https://www.facebook.com/313516748748592/videos/1463839110383011/
https://www.facebook.com/compassion4addiction.org/
- Family Care Foundation, Sweden
Healing Homes: An Alternative, Swedish Model for Healing Psychosis.
Healing Homes is a program that, in this era of multi-drug cocktails and psychiatric diagnoses-for-life, helps people recover from psychosis without medication.
The organization, backed by over twenty years of experience, places people who have been failed by traditional psychiatry in host families — predominately farm families in the Swedish countryside — as a start for a whole new life journey.
Host families are chosen not for any psychiatric expertise, rather, for their compassion, stability, and desire to give back. People live with these families for upwards of a year or two and become an integral part of a functioning family system. Staff members offer clients intensive psychotherapy and provide host families with intensive supervision.
The Family Care Foundation eschews the use of diagnosis, works within a framework of striving to help people come safely off psychiatric medication, and provides their services, which operate within the context of Swedish socialized medicine, for free.
- Dr. Kelly Brogan
« I’m here to tell you that you have choices and the power to change your life. You can get healthy and live happily – without drugs. » Dr. Brogan, MD.
Kelly Brogan, M.D. is a holistic psychiatrist, author of the NY Times Bestselling book, A Mind of Your Own, Own Your Self. She is the founder of the online healing program Vital Mind Reset, and the membership community, Vital Life Project. She completed her psychiatric training and fellowship at NYU Medical Center after graduating from Cornell University Medical College, and has a B.S. from M.I.T. in Systems Neuroscience. She is specialized in a root-cause resolution approach to psychiatric syndromes and symptoms.
Unfortunately, what drives these health industries, ultimately, is our reliance on them and the dollars that come from our wallets. When we delegate the responsibility for our health to someone else, we lose.
Own your body. Free your mind. Our mission is to provide true informed consent around medication-based treatment and empower individuals with tools for radical self-healing.
The good news is that you’re in control. The truth is that only you can get you well. We all need time to validate our suffering, but then we need to step into a place of self-empowerment.
When you know better, you do better. This is a journey of awakening. That means no more blaming ourselves for the past, and instead, looking for ways to grow and improve every day.
Suffering ends where meaning begins. We are here for a very meaningful experience. By turning towards our symptoms, we can glean powerful insights that lead to deeper healing.
https://kellybroganmd.mykajabi.com/vital-life-project-offer
S C H O L A R S H I P S
The JAEC Foundation Scholarship & Opportunity Training Programmes.
- Open Dialogue 1-year Foundation Training Program, UK.
The Open dialogue UK program is the first full Open Dialogue Training program to be run outside of Finland.
The Open Dialogue approach is both a philosophical/theoretical approach to people experiencing a mental health crisis and their families/networks and a system of care, developed in Western Lapland in Finland over the last 35 years. In the 1980s psychiatric services in Western Lapland were in a poor state, in fact, they had one of the worst incidences of the diagnosis of schizophrenia’ in Europe. Now they have the best-documented outcomes in the Western World. For example, around 75% of those experiencing psychosis have returned to work or study within 2 years and only around 20% are still taking antipsychotic medication at a 2-year follow-up.
Whilst it is clear that the full three year training is central to the development of Open Dialogue within services, we also feel that it is important to offer shorter training programmes in order to help the approach develop more widely within services. Participants will learn the essential skills for starting to use the approach. Our foundation training in London consists of five blocks of 4 days spread over the course of the year. The training is led by senior Finnish trainers as well as other leading international practitioners/trainers. Independent practitioners and peers are also welcome onto this program.
The JAEC Foundation accepts candidacies from professionals (both private and public) as well as from independent practitioners and peers.
- eCPR Training
Emotional CPR (eCPR) is an educational program designed to teach people to assist others through an emotional crisis by three simple steps:
e = Emotional
C = Connecting
P = emPowering, and
R = Revitalizing.
The Connecting process of eCPR (www.emotional-cpr.org) involves deepening listening skills, practicing presence, and creating a sense of safety for the person experiencing a crisis. The emPowering process helps people better understand how to feel empowered themselves as well as to assist others to feel more hopeful and engaged in life. In the Revitalizating process, people re-engage in relationships with their loved ones or their support system, and they resume or begin routines that support health and wellness which reinforces the person’s sense of mastery and accomplishment, further energizing the healing process.
eCPR is based on the principles found to be shared by a number of support approaches: trauma-informed care, counseling after disasters, peer support to avoid continuing emotional despair, emotional intelligence, suicide prevention, and cultural attunement. It was developed with input from a diverse cadre of recognized leaders from across the U.S., who themselves have learned how to recover and grow from emotional crises. They have wisdom by the grace of first- hand experience.
The JAEC Foundation offer this training to public sectors such as the fire fighter’s force, the police force, social services, and prison guards.
The applications are supplied via emial: info@jaecfoundation.org