December, 2006

Building Bridges: Mental Health Consumers and Primary Health Care Representatives in Dialogue

CMHSs traditional focus has been on providing mental health services. But in discussions of integrating primary health care with mental health, prevention of mental illnesses and promotion of mental health must also be considered. The more that mental health promotion, mental illness prevention, and substance abuse prevention become part of the prevention agenda for public health, the better the stage can be set for developing the financing mechanisms and policies that will make transformation possible.

A series of CMHS dialogue meetings has examined approaches that impact personal and, ultimately, systems transformation. Participants in the dialogues share their own relevant experiences that promoted or hindered recovery. Both personal and systems transformation depend on relationships and connections between people, and dialogues help to identify barriers and to forge relationships that lead to recommendations and actions that foster recovery for consumers of mental health services.