Our Work
The Centre’s work revolves around three thematic areas: mental health futures, research, and dialogue. Read more about our work below.
We investigate...
Mad Thinking
Mad Thinking is a knowledge development and exchange initiative dedicated to producing and disseminating user/survivor and critical research to advance the rights and inclusion of persons with psychosocial disabilities, including users, survivors and mad persons. Mad Thinking brings together researchers, policy advocates, community activists and survivors, curating and disseminating their knowledge and work. Mad Thinking aims to build links between the global South and North as well as between research and activism/advocacy.
(Un)Mapping Global Mental Health
(Un)Mapping Global Mental Health involves participatory research into the discourses, people, institutions, and money that make up Global Mental Health (GMH). Evidence shows that people with lived experience, those who identify as people with psychosocial disabilities, and service users and psychiatric survivors, are under-represented in global knowledge production about mental health. This research project will make important interventions within GMH, and the fields of global health and medical sociology more broadly, by disentangling the intricate networks and assemblages that make up Global Mental Health.
We convene...
Dialogues
The Handover Dialogues documents the legacy of work produced by Dr. Dainius Pūras, who became the first medical doctor to be appointed Special Rapporteur on the right to physical and mental health. In 2020, Dr. Pūras ended his tenure with the appointment of Tlaleng Mofokeng, another historic appointment as the first woman and first person from the global South to hold this post.
Visit the Handover Dialogues website here.
Housing First in Brazil
The Centre is working with the Brazilian Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship to facilitate the development of a national Housing First policy that will place human rights at the forefront of addressing the needs of unhoused individuals, including those with psycho-social disabilities.
The national Housing First programme, part of a broader overarching plan to address homelessness in Brazil and advance the right to housing, will be launched in twenty-four cities across Brazil in 2024. President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva is committed to the program’s success and has announced a national plan to address homelessness in the country on December 11th, 2023 with a budget of 1 billion Reais.
In November 2023 the Centre co-organized an International Seminar with the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship and Columbia University in Brasília. More information about the seminar can be found here.
In addition to expert consultations and seminars, the Centre is partnering with local organizations implementing Housing First units to research its effectiveness and adherence to Human Rights standards.
