AVES MH

Developing and empowering global lived experience leaders. https://www.gmhpn.org/services.html

Experts by Experience engagement and consultations, document and policy reviews, meet the people who tell their stories about thriving with a mental health condition.

01/09/2026

Nobody told me...

In a world where young people are often spoken about, spoken for, or expected to fit their experiences into systems and language created by older generations, there can be very little space to simply say: this is what it feels like for me.

There are many things young people learn about mental health through experience rather than through formal learning pathways. Sometimes the things we wish someone had told us are the things we only learn when we are already struggling.

Nobody Told Me creates space for young people to reflect on those gaps - the things they wish they had known, the things they have learned along the way, and the messages they want other young people to hear.

In this video, our YA4C advocates share their thoughts, experiences and reflections through creative expression. Creativity in advocacy is a way of communicating that does not require lived experience to be packaged neatly or explained in formal language. It allows young people to express ideas, emotions and perspectives in ways that feel authentic to them, while creating opportunities for others to listen and share.

Here is the link to the video: https://youtu.be/xqyiA7B0i-M

Thank you to all our youth advocates who contributed to this piece, and to Ditshego Nadia Marema and Soraya Syah for their leadership, creativity and vision in bringing this project to life.

28/08/2026

Workplace mental health initiatives fail because the conditions for change are not in place.

Creating those conditions requires action across multiple fronts simultaneously. Leadership that integrates mental health into core policy rather than treating it as a peripheral concern. Dedicated budgets that make support accessible even to lower-resourced enterprises.

Employment laws aligned with international human rights instruments and backed by meaningful non-discrimination protections. Occupational safety and health systems that embed mental health rather than treating it as a separate agenda.

Compliance mechanisms, including labour inspectorates, that hold organisations accountable. And evidence-based guidance that aligns with research on psychosocial risks and effective interventions.

Running through all of this is a principle that too often gets lost: workers must participate in the decisions that shape their working lives. Meaningful, timely engagement with workers, their representatives, and people with lived experience is the foundation on which any of this can work.

Systemic change in workplace mental health requires systemic action, not isolated initiatives.

27/08/2026

Mental health at work is often shaped not by policy documents but by the quality of a single relationship: the one between a worker and their manager.

WHO's recommendations on protecting and promoting mental health at work reflect this reality. Manager training that builds the capacity to recognize emotional distress, communicate openly, listen actively, and understand the link between job stressors and mental health is among the most direct interventions available.

Alongside this, training workers in mental health literacy reduces stigma and builds a shared language for wellbeing across teams. Equipping workers with practical skills to manage stress, through psychosocial interventions and opportunities for physical activity, addresses the personal dimension of what is usually a systemic challenge.

Workplaces that invest in the knowledge and skills of their people, at every level, create the conditions in which mental health can be protected rather than just talked about.

26/08/2026

Workplace mental health is not an individual problem with an individual solution.

The risks that harm mental health at work are often systemic, and addressing them requires action from every level. Governments must create enabling policy environments. Employers must take prevention seriously, not just respond when things go wrong. Worker organisations must ensure their members' mental health is addressed as a legitimate occupational health issue. And all of these actors must work together rather than in silos.

What is often missing from these conversations is the voice of workers themselves, particularly those with lived experience of mental health conditions. Meaningful involvement is what ensures that the action taken reflects the workers. Workplaces that protect mental health are built with workers, not just for them.

What does meaningful worker involvement in mental health initiatives look like?

25/08/2026

There is a particular kind of tokenism that invites people with lived experience into policy spaces without giving them the knowledge, language, or networks to influence what happens there.

Genuine capacity-building means providing training in research, communication, and advocacy. It means supporting people to understand and engage with political, policy, and legal frameworks, including how agendas are set and how decisions get translated into practice. It means ensuring that training materials are accessible, evidence-based, and do not inadvertently reinforce the power imbalances they are trying to address. And it means formally recognizing participation through certificates and accreditation, because recognition matters and signals that the contribution is real.

Critically, this is not a one-way obligation. WHO and Member States must also build their own capacity to engage meaningfully, to adopt rights-based participatory approaches, and to address the health inequities that make genuine engagement so difficult in the first place.

24/08/2026

24 August | Monday Reflection 🤍

Looking ahead doesn't mean having all the answers.

Sometimes hope begins with believing that tomorrow can hold something different, even if today feels uncertain. Every new day offers another opportunity to learn, grow, and begin again.

The future is shaped one step, one choice, and one moment at a time.

✨ What are you looking forward to, no matter how big or small?

21/08/2026

Power does not redistribute itself. And those who hold it rarely find it easy to share.

Addressing unequal power structures in health systems requires acknowledgement of the long-standing economic, environmental, racial, and gender inequalities that reinforce them. It requires active allyship and clear stances on racism, colonialism, and discrimination. And it requires new models of participation that do not simply replicate the dynamics they claim to be dismantling.

One of the most important shifts is geographic and relational. Bringing engagement to local settings, to the communities where the most marginalized people live, rather than convening them at institutional headquarters, changes who can participate and on whose terms. It signals that the agenda is genuinely open to being shaped by those most affected, not just endorsed by them after the fact.

20/08/2026

The experiences and behaviours developed during adolescence can shape health and wellbeing across the life course. Stress during these years builds from exposure to adversity, pressure to conform with peers, and the ordinary work of exploring identity, all compounded by media influence and gender norms that widen the gap between a young person's lived experiences and what they hoped their life would look like.

Home life, peer relationships, harsh parenting, violence, particularly sexual violence and bullying, all shape the outcome long before a diagnosis enters the picture. Risk is not distributed evenly either.

Adolescents in humanitarian or fragile settings, those living with chronic illness, autism spectrum disorder or intellectual disability, pregnant adolescents and adolescent parents, those in early or forced marriage, orphans, and young people from minority ethnic or sexual backgrounds all carry a heavier load, not because of who they are but because of the stigma, discrimination, and exclusion against them.

Mental health support needs to meet young people where they are, reflecting their realities, experiences, and needs.

19/08/2026

Mental health support for refugees and migrants often fails not because the interventions are wrong, but because they are too narrow. A single mental health service cannot compensate for insecure housing, limited access to legal support, or exclusion from employment and education.

Effective policy addresses these as interconnected, engaging law enforcement, social services, migration officers, teachers, and faith groups so that people are recognized and referred long before they reach a clinical setting. It also means giving people choices in provider, location, and treatment approach, rather than a single fixed pathway, and clear communication about the services available.

Protection matters as much as provision, particularly for unaccompanied minors, people with disabilities and those who identify as LGBTIQ+, who face compounding risks of discrimination and violence. None of this holds together without continuity, providers communicating with each other, and health information that travels with the person rather than resetting at every border or referral.

18/08/2026

Unpaid or underpaid participation is not meaningful engagement. It is exploitation.

Asking people with lived experience of mental health conditions to contribute their knowledge, time, and emotional labour without equivalent compensation to that received by technical experts and consultants reproduces the very inequities that meaningful engagement is supposed to address.

Sustainable financing for engagement means more than fair remuneration. It means funding recruitment, capacity building, and the removal of practical barriers such as childcare and access to digital or in-person participation. It means providing funds directly and without constraining conditions that compromise independent input. And it means embedding these commitments within resource mobilisation plans and donor agreements so they are not vulnerable to being cut when budgets tighten.

You can't build equitable mental health systems on the uncompensated labour of the people those systems are meant to serve.

How is your organization approaching the fair remuneration of people with lived experience? We would love to hear your experience.

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