Description

By ANDREW TURTLE

ISBN: 978-1-78382-506-6
Published: 2020
Pages: 29

Author Description

I am a mental health consumer who was hospitalised three times before I was 20. After completing studies in Traditional Chinese Medicine and International Public Health, I was introduced to the consumer movement in 2015 and have since become involved in multiple consumer representative roles on local, state-wide and global committees. In 2017, I created the Mental Health Navigation Tool (NavTool), a website that mapped the mental health and related services in my region. Since then I have worked in the Partners in Recovery (PIR) program and currently work as a local area coordinator (LAC) in partnership with the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). I am also chairperson of a regional consumer and carer committee as well as the Australian representative on the Global Mental Health Peer Network (GMHPN).

Book Description

The Consumer Journey is a simple picture of the various roles that impact a person life with the lived experience of mental health as they rehabilitate and recovery from a mental illness. The Consumer Journey explores questions related to what is a mental illness, psychosocial disability, a mental health consumer, the domains of life, the role carers play and factors that influence the lived experience of mental health through the provision of prevention, promotion and early intervention services. The Consumer Journey also encourages a journey into the world of peer support, crisis and emergency care, the transition back into the community as well as the influence rehabilitation, recovery and consumer representation have in the development of programs, services and initiatives in the mental health system.

The Consumer Journey is the first publication in the Consumer Journey Series that will include a number of works that raises topics associated with mental health and a consumer’s journey as they rehabilitate and recover from mental illness. The questions that the Consumer Journey Series will answer include:
• What is mental health, mental illness, psychosocial disability and a mental health consumer?
• What domains of life impact one’s lived experience of mental health?
• What impact carers have in the rehabilitation and recovery of a mental illness?
• What impact does prevention, promotion and early intervention have in the development of mental illnesses?
• What factors impact crisis and emergency care and the transition of people back into the community after an acute mental illness? as well as
• What role does the consumer voice, peer support and consumer leadership have in shaping mental health programs, services and initiatives?

The Consumer Journey provides a simple pictorial presentation of these themes in an attempt to highlight the journey a mental health consumer takes as they experience acute and chronic mental illnesses in a modern society. In e-book format, the Consumer Journey will provide an opportunity to promote the themes in this series through practical workshop style publications. The author hopes to promote these themes in line with the development of other projects (such as The Global Now Project), to take a step towards having a bigger picture of how mental health programs, services and initiatives can transform the lives of people living with and caring for people with mental illness as they rehabilitate, recover from and become leaders in the mental health system.