Mary O'Hagan recounts "pills, pillows, patriarchy" of her experience

Look what I uncovered from Mary O'Hagan's website (emphasis mine; I'm sure some of you will recognise her name on mental health articles/reports)...
Mary was:
•    an initiator of the service user movement in New Zealand in the late 1980s 
•    the first chair of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (1991-95)
•    an advisor to the United Nations and World Health Organization (1997- 2004) on disability issues as they relate to people with major mental distress
•    a mental health commissioner for New Zealand (2000-2007) – the highest government position held by an openly identified service user in any country.
That answers the questions: When did peer services begin in NZ? and How does NZ stand amongst other countries in public/political acceptance of mental health service users recovery and contribution? Go NZ!
Here is a video of her talking about her negative experience of traditional mental health services she received as a user and the role of the Mental Health Commission.

Reference

O'Hagan, M. (2010). Leader and recovery expert with lived experience. Retrieved from http://www.maryohagan.com/mental-health-rights.html

Setting up peer services in Counties Manukau - threefold benefits for users, peers and clinicians

I was looking for information about peer services in NZ and found a very informative interview with Sue Hallwright, manager of the mental health development team in Counties Manukau DHB, who talks about the experience of setting up peer services. Sadly I wasn't allowed to embed on blogger.com so I've provided a summary and then a link for anyone who wants to have a look at the video (it's about 30 minutes long, but goes fast, very interesting!). 
Sue first talks about how some team members were sent to in Phoenix, Arizona, and came back inspired and impassioned. This service also provided their training programme so that helped get things up and running in a shorter time. Over the last few years, about 120 people with experience of mental health services have been trained to become peer support specialists who work within the multidisciplinary team. All service users have the right to receive peer support. 
This move has benefitted not only users, who receive support and regain hope from "living proof that recovery happens", but also the peer support specialists who through the training reshape their own experiences as strengths and are recast as "heroes" and "experts". Graduating from the training programme and having employment are strong evidence of recovery and a better future for users. Interestingly, she said that clinicians also benefitted because (for some of the jaded ones) the peer support specialists reminded the clinicians that there was hope!
Here is the link to the video and for anyone interested, here is a link to Sue Hallwright's current portfolio on the DHB website. I'll try to find a video of a user's or a peer's perspectives, or if anyone knows of any, please let me know!

A bit of history

Gawith and Abrams (2006) wrote a great article tracing the journey of mental health services in NZ. Consumer advocacy and consumer-led services have their roots in the 1980s and a series of inquiries (eg Cartwright Report of 1988 and Mason Reports in the 1990s) brought to attention the dire state of patient rights and questioned the total authority traditionally associated with the medical profession. The Mental Health Commission was set up to do something about this and services have been, well, recovering from the past ever since. I would really recommend this article for anyone interested in a well-written overview of the evolution of services in NZ from the historical psychiatry-led biomedical focus to today's recovery and consumer rights focus. I found it really helped my understanding to step back and look at the bigger picture, politically, socially, all the events that propelled and impacted the development of services (including peer-led services) along the way.
Reference
Gawith, L. & Abrams, P. (2006). Long journey to recovery for Kiwi consumers: Recent developments in mental health policy and practice in New Zealand [Electronic version]. Australian Psychologist, 41(2), 140-48.