Speak Your Mind

In 2013, I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and chronic depression which pushed me to the edge. I could afford the treatment I needed and, with the right support, I recovered. The experience propelled me into discovering incredible initiatives around the world aimed at prevention, promotion and providing treatment and recovery solutions for those of us struggling with our mental health.

However, I also discovered that in many cases the services were sporadic, poorly funded and insufficient to meet the enormous global demand for mental health care. The global mental health crisis has reached epidemic proportions, yet funding for mental health care is flat-lining. Not only is greater action needed, but the world needs to recognise the potential that gets unlocked when we invest in people’s mental health. For individuals. Businesses. Communities. Society as a whole. 

Speak Your Mind is about giving mental health a voice for action,  calling on leaders to provide quality mental health care for all. It's time for them to invest, educate, and empower now, for the future we need. 

This is the first ever multi-country, locally-driven, globally united campaign designed to catalyse greater action on global mental health. Supporting citizens to speak their mind about mental health and join the global fight for action on mental health.

We aim to catalyse government action on mental health to improve the accessibility and quality of mental health services nationally and globally. Raising the voice of people with lived experience - who are those best equipped to understand what works on mental health where they are no longer excluded from key decision-making processes. People with lived experience are integral and indispensable in the conversation, informing every aspect of how mental health is managed.

Mental ill health and its consequences have traditionally been seen as a fringe issue concerning a select few in the wealthy nations of the global north. But the reality is that mental health is a truly global issue - one that knows no geographic, racial, gender, ethnic or other social boundaries. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 400 million to 500 million people worldwide are now living with a mental health condition. However, it is in LMICs where access to mental health care is drastically limited. Though they constitute 85% of the world population, only a small proportion of those living in LMICs receive the mental health care they need. The WHO estimate that more than 75% of people affected by mental ill health in LMICs have not received treatment.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-29-year-olds, mental ill health can severely impede the ability of individuals to manage the demands of day-to-day life and secure the necessities of survival. Mental health conditions could cost the global economy US$ 16 trillion from 2010 to 2030, and threaten progress in meeting SDGs such as those relating to education and gender equality. There's no health without mental health. 

1.  Supporting and strengthening the work of the Speak Your Mind campaign, with a focus on global coordination and dedicated support

1. 1. Supporting the overall coordination of countries - by funding our Speak Your Mind country campaign manager role

   2. Facilitating the development of the global strategy from bottom up - working closely with our campaign partners we will build the next phase of the Speak Your Mind campaign strategy collaboratively. This will centre on key convening moments, in particular the next global campaign meeting in February/March 2020 (due to take place in Kenya, hosted by our partners there)

   3. Building the capacity of campaign partners - by delivering 5 capacity-building workshops in Comic Relief priority countries. This will include country and regional meetings - to help build capacity at both levels and regional collaboration.

      2.  Sustaining a pooled fund that was developed as a source of funding for country partners who are part of the campaign - this fund enables them to deliver the work related to the campaign, on the ground in their countries.

There is a broad consensus amongst the global mental health expert community about what needs to be funded. What is missing is the financial and political will to prioritise and scale up the interventions that work. This is where the Speak Your Mind Campaign comes in.

We believe the best way forward is firstly to ensure people with lived experience - who are those best equipped to understand what works and what doesn’t on mental health where they are - are no longer excluded from key decision-making processes. People with lived experience must be an integral and indispensable part of the conversation, informing every aspect of how mental health is managed within communities, health services and governments. The role of global partners - such as investors and international organisations - is to then amplify these civil society voices.

We work with global partners to build their capacity in campaigning and advocating on behalf of their communities. We meet with them regularly to understand their needs.  We spend time researching where the gaps are. We work with our partners to address those needs.

Our project elevates issues faced by the global mental health community and the campaign and projects therein by building capacity and awareness though specific delivery and driving action to solve what we believe is one of the most difficult problems of our world - ill mental health and the issues with addressing ill mental health around the globe.

After my personal experience and coupled with working with campaigning organisations around the world I developed a great interest in mental health globally. After speaking with mental health advocates and experts around the world it became clear that a much greater global effort was needed, though could not find a dedicated global organisation or campaigning working to accelerate action. 

Wondering why this was the case, she asked Sarah Kline and Zander Woollcombe (Co-Founders of United for Global Health), as global health financing, campaign and advocacy experts, if they knew of anyone who did. They too had not heard of any organisations doing global work on mental health, but felt it vital. They also expressed their own journeys with ill-mental health. We then started outreach to organisations around the world to ask how they could help the global mental health community.  Together with partners from various countries they worked to bring together campaigners, strategic partners, funders and mental health experts from around the world to launch United for Global Mental Health in September 2018.

After living through Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and chronic depression which pushed me to the edge, and going through treatment, being able to work and get my life back on tract I started to take notice of the things that saved my life and how these things did not seen to be readily available around the world.  I was working with a global organisation at the time and that gave me insight to different projects around the world.  My passion to support mental health treatment becoming globally accessible grew.  I asked a lot of questions of people I knew had experience in campaigning for this kind of work - and the fact that they didn't know any organisation working on campaigning on this globally only fuelled my passion. I started to realise the need for much greater action globally and worked to bring together campaigners, strategic partners, funders and mental health experts from around the world to launch United for Global Mental Health in September 2018. 

We are the only organisation doing this work.  There is no one else doing it, there is no one else funding it, there is no one else bringing the expertise together to address it.  We are doing all these things. Working in partnership with international agencies and experts in the field, we exist to support and unite the global effort to promote mental health. We are all passionate about catalysing greater action on mental health and many of us have first-hand experience of living with a condition ourselves.

I am a social entrepreneur. I am an NGO leader who has created a fantastic organisation in the Global Poverty Project in the UK. Being pivotal to its development and has formed strong partnerships with actors across the development sector and beyond. I have the strategic skills and ability to get things done! I am a creative leader with the enthusiasm to bring people on a journey. Having successfully developed the Global Poverty Project to the Heads Together campaign and now founding United for Global Mental Health and growing the Speak Your Mind Campaign I have managed to overcome professional adversity as well as extreme personal challenges.  I have used my past challenges to fuel my passions for the work I do.

I will go back to my experience with my own mental health. This drove me to forge a new path for the global mental health network.  I have used both my personal experience and the experience gained from working in international organisations to inform and strategise how to build a new organisation that I developed to address a need that was simply not even a concept to anyone else.  I brought together Sarah Kline and Zander Woollcombe (who became Co-Founders of United for Global Health), as global health financing, campaign and advocacy experts, to help me develop a programme to address the issue.  I brought in people from as many different countries as I could for the start-up to build a campaign that would work in each of their contexts and drive a truly locally let, globally united campaign.  I think the building of this organisation and the campaign demonstrates my leadership ability.

Our campaign is always evolving to suit the needs of the people it serves.  We recently integrated work to support COVID-19 responses, including an open letter to governments to remember mental ill health in their COVID response. We work with our country partners to develop and re-design activities and build capacity in new ways to address new issues as they arise.

We are growing the campaign and hope to be in double the number of countries to triple in five years.  My desire is to be truly global in our reach, working closely with our national partners.

The main issue we face is financial - funding for our kind of work is very limited. We are always focused on finding funding to propel our work and support our partners in the various ways that build their capacity as well.

We are working on our development and fundraising - working in partnership with different funders, but mainly working on philanthropy in global mental health.

Wellcome Trust UK, Comic Relief UK, HSBC, Pivotal, Korum for Kids, Grand Challengers Canada, World YMCA, Born This Way, Clubhouse International

We look and see where there's more action needed to address mental health and bring our skills in campaigning, advocacy and financing to develop initiatives, with our partners, that will catalyse more action in those areas.

We are working to build our donor base with longer term philanthropy donors as well as work with larger foundations and trusts on the importance of the work we are doing.  Our financial stability depends on our advocacy and campaigning work - where people start to believe in the work we do and want to ensure we keep doing it.

We have one funder who is covering a proportion of the funds needed.

I would like to secure a grant for US$560k per annum to allow us to continue to our work.

1. $100k = Supporting and strengthening the work of Speak Your Mind campaign partners

   1. Supporting the overall coordination of countries - by funding our Speak Your Mind Country Campaign Manager role for 1 year; £50k = covering 100% of the wage of the Country Campaign Manager Role for 1 year

   2. Facilitating the continuing development of the global strategy from bottom up - working closely with our campaign partners we will continue to build the Speak Your Mind campaign strategy collaboratively. 

• $100k = Total cost of running the Campaign Strategy Planning Workshops

1. 1. 1. Providing support for LMIC countries to attend global moments (UNGA, WHA & 2 other global moments as yet unplanned for)

• $30k = Post COVID-19 Flights for Country Partners - (£1,000 average flight cost for 7x partners/ambassadors for 4x global moments) and Visa Costs for UnitedGMH staff & Country Partners for all global moments 

• $30k = Post COVID-19 Accomodation for Country partners attending global moments

- $100k = The cost of running 5 country workshops (£20k average cost per workshop x 5)

Building the capacity of campaign partners - by delivering 5 capacity-building workshops in Comic Relief priority countries. This will also include regional meetings which help build regional collaboration. 

2. $200k = Sustaining the controlled and UnitedGMH coordinated Pooled Fund 

Expenses for the Campaign for 2020 circa US$1.5m

Mental Ill-health affects people in every country around the world.  Some countries are more adept at recognizing symptoms and treating them and others are not. But every country is failing to manage it.

 Up to half of people with mental 50% health conditions in high-income countries and over three-quarters in low and middle-income countries receive no treatment.

It’s a common, yet devastating, problem. Depression and anxiety are among the leading causes of disability worldwide.

Tackling the problem will mean harnessing significant investment which will require a global outcry.

We want mental health for all. This means that whenever anyone needs support for their mental health, wherever they live, they have access to quality trained support. This means that no-one should suffer unnecessarily due to their mental health condition or be held back from achieving their full potential due to a mental health condition.