Open Up is a grassroots network of people with experience of mental distress, working together towards a world without mental health discrimination. We bring people together through networking, mentoring and training activities to share their ideas, resources and experiences.

Torsten Shaw - Open Up East Midlands Region Co-ordinator             Torsten's Blog

I have been working with the Open Up project since it started in 2003. We have always been a fairly small fish but becoming part of Time for Change has really upped our profile and given us far greater resources to tackle prejudice and discrimination faced by people who have experienced mental health problems.

I have worked in small mental health projects for the last 15 years. It is a passion of mine driven in part by my own experiences and those close to me, but also by the way I see people being damaged by the society we have with its brutal inequality.

I got fed up with the various projects I had worked for and decided to set something up myself. So in 2003 I started Making Waves (hope I have been for a lot longer than that J). We are all people who have had experience of mental distress and used a wide variety of services. We do training, service evaluation and research and anti-discrimination work. So what we do fits very closely with my work for Open Up and hopefully both projects benefit!

In the East Midlands our current major interests are:

• Building a media network - we ran a 4 day training course last year and are looking for funding to support the network.
• Working with people who are in the criminal justice system to try and improve support for the large number of prisoners who have mental health problems.
• Trying to establish a co-ordinated training programme on mental health/well being for young people and for working in schools.
• We will be running an event for ‘mad' people in the East Midlands in March to share ideas and resources and to think through how we carry forward the work on tackling discrimination.
• The first small project awards have been decided by Open Up and we hope to start working with them very soon. I'll say more next time.
• We are working to try and raise the issues that people face who have a so-called Dual Diagnosis i.e. they have a mental health problem and alcohol/drug dependency. People often fall between both services and face a double dose of prejudice, sometimes leading to tragic consequences.
• There are lots of other things that we are interested in doing especially involving the arts.

If any of this sounds like ‘your kind of thing' and you want to make something happen then get in touch. Despite all the gloomy news there are some exciting developments around mental health. Lets make sure it is done properly.