Service user organisations

'A Funny Farm' by Cooltan Arts aims to give a grassroots voice to those using or involved with mental health services providing each other with support, advice and sharing experiences, it will also be a creative place, where you can put drawings, paintings, photographs, creative writing, music and spoken word poetry.

Webpage by a group of political activists who set up their own peer-support network to deal with the psychological consequences of being politically active outside the parliamentary system. Problems described include the consequences of living class struggle and being exposed to attacks by police.

Asylum, the magazine was set up by a group of sufferers and professionals and much influenced by the “antipsychiatry” movement.
It describes itself as an international magazine for democratic psychiatry, psychology, education and community development.

Cooltan Arts exists to inspire the well-being and creative participation of a diverse range of people through the production of quality art.

Based in South London's lively Walworth Road they have three workshops and a gallery.

Creative Routes is an award-winning interdisciplinary arts charity, run by the mad for the mad. Creative Routes celebrates and promotes the unique creativity of mad people, promoting mental well-being, and creatively campaigning against discrimination and for the acceptance of individuality in society.

Excellent resource on the state of race relations in the UK today. Regularly updated and has links to other websites. Information on Immigration, Refugees and Race.

The National Survivor User Network (NSUN) brings together groups and organisations in England that are run by users and survivors of mental health services in one national network.

NSUN is itself a user-led initiative and aims to provide support to existing user-led groups and helps build capacity within the service user movement but does not represent the user movement and is not the voice of this movement.

The Refugee Community History Project has collected the previously untold stories of refugees who have settled in London since 1951 in order to highlight the enormous contributions they make to the city.

This major initiative to record refugees' first hand experiences for current and future generations to explore ran from June 2004 to April 2007. Over 150 refugees from 15 different groups have taken part. This web site contains sections -- both audio and text -- of those refugees' stories.

Refugees flee to foreign countries, like the UK, because of persecution in their home country, or because of a well-founded fear of persecution. This may be because of a refugee's race, religion, nationality, social group, political opinion, or as a result of war.

The project won the 2006 Charity Award for arts, culture and heritage.

The interviews collected by the project are archived at the Museum of London and constitute an extraordinary and unrivalled collection of testimony based material on the subject of refugees in the UK, they also formed the basis of the major exhibition Belonging which ran from November 2006 to February 2007. In addition the project has produced a variety of educational resources based upon the material collected including CD ROMs, a short film collection and a mobile exhibition. These are available free of charge.

The 'see me' campaign was launched in October 2002 to challenge stigma and discrimination around mental ill-health in Scotland. The campaign is run by an alliance of five Scottish mental health organisations: Highland Users Group (HUG); National Schizophrenia Fellowship (Scotland); Penumbra; the Royal College of Psychiatrists (Scottish Division)and the Scottish Association for Mental Health.

Survivor Research offers consultancy services in mental health research, evaluation, organisational development and service audits. They specialise in foregrounding the perspectives of Black and Minority Ethnic service users and survivors in the thinking and innovation around mental health, well being and recovery.