What is self-advocacy in mental health and who is a self-advocate?



Hey guys ‘what is self-advocacy in mental health and who is a self-advocate?’

A self-advocate in mental health is someone who advocates for themselves and encourages others to come out of their problems and do the same by sharing their personal story of how they conquered their mental health issue and developed a newly empowered voice. The objective of self-advocacy is to exercise the right to freely express our views, to promote self-determination, and protect dignity in the field of mental health where both in the institutional system of psychiatry and in the informal systems of family and community all these rights are at permanent risk of being ignored. Self-advocacy is rather a process than an act, and negotiations play a central role in the process.
It is important to understand why self-advocacy is needed. And why speaking on behalf of a relative or client is different from the user speaking up for themselves. You own your story and you know what led to your recovery much better than anyone else has because you are the subjective experiencer. By doing this we not only empower users but also facilitate the non-users to open their hearts and eyes to see the strengths of users and their own vulnerabilities. After all, self-advocates are experiential experts. They’ve been through an episode of psychosocial disability and have known what it was like to undergo it and how they came out of it and are thereby in a much better position to inform and inspire the others about how they can do the same. And that’s what self-advocacy in mental health is all about!!!

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