Raza Griffiths

UKDHM Launch contributor provides a selection of resources focusing on mental health.
  1. “A Call for Social Justice” – a manifesto building on over two decades of literature (much of it BAME service user led) and developed in consultation with 250 BAME mental health service users. It highlights key policy and practice changes needed to improve BAME mental health service user wellbeing. The manifesto identifies the interrelated determinants of mental wellbeing, including challenging racism, and the need to have a more politicised understanding of “mental health”. Please see links to full and executive summary version on this webpage https://www.nsun.org.uk/news/bme-mental-health-service-users-launch-manifesto
  2. A personal account, published in Asylum magazine, of my experiences in a mental health therapeutic community of racism, and of how therapeutic models fall short when it comes to understanding structural oppression, and the political context in which racism is validated https://asylummagazine.org/2020/09/beyond-the-pale-by-raza-griffiths/
  3. A framework for developing more meaningful involvement of mental health service users in a range of different organisations called the 4PI Framework, developed in consultation with 150 mental health service users by National Survivor User Network for the Department of Health   https://www.nationalvoices.org.uk/sites/default/files/public/4pinationalinvolvementstandardsfullreport20152.pdf
  4. An aspirational and hope filled personal narrative journey, using drawings to highlight the enablers or stages on the journey that took me to a better place and which focuses on things like: acknowledgement of pain and loss, meaningful activity with others, the importance of being heard and of listening, and having the space to develop aspirations one can move towards. Please see my article “The Upward Spiral”, pp. 81 – 85, in The Colour of Madness https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40677604-the-colour-of-madness