The NSUN podcast

Kadra Abdinasir and António Ferreira talk to Amy Wells from NSUN about lived experience work at the intersections of anti-racism and mental health.

Kadra (lead, Children & Young People's Mental Health at Centre for Mental Health, and organiser, Charity So White) and António (mental health activist/speaker and student) discuss the dynamics of lived experience based "work" in anti-racism and mental health from the challenges and barriers to what nurtures this kind of activity. They touch on the "hard to reach" narrative, the state of anti-racism work within the mental health charity sector, and the emotional toll of doing this kind of work and activism.

Links:

NSUN member Erica sits down with Luna Tic, Sunny, Hope, Bethan and Hattie from the StopSIM coalition to look back at the grassroots campaign against the High Intensity Network's 'Serenity Integrated Mentoring' (SIM) programme for 'High Intensity Users' of crisis and emergency services, which criminalised distress and used the threat of punitive legal action to coerce people into no longer “demonstrating intensive patterns of demand” without addressing unmet need.

The coalition – a collection of activists who are past or present service users, carers and allies - worked tirelessly and in their own time to extensively research and campaign around the issue and succeeded in seeing the High Intensity Network close and getting NHS England (NHSE) to publicly outline their intention to conduct a review of SIM, however, we are yet to see the results of the local reviews NHSE triggered.

This is episode two of two, covering:

• What are the moments in the campaign that made the coalition feel proud? 
• And finally: if you could wave a magic wand or make a wish, what would make things better?

You can find part one here. It covered:

• How the campaign and coalition began 
• What the campaign strategy was and how it changed 
• The cost of the campaign: was it worth it?

This podcast comes with a content warning for references to suicide and iatrogenic harm.

NSUN member Erica sits down with Luna Tic, Sunny, Hope, Bethan and Hattie from the StopSIM coalition to look back at the grassroots campaign against the High Intensity Network's 'Serenity Integrated Mentoring' (SIM) programme for 'High Intensity Users' of crisis and emergency services, which criminalised distress and used the threat of punitive legal action to coerce people into no longer “demonstrating intensive patterns of demand” without addressing unmet need.

The coalition – a collection of activists who are past or present service users, carers and allies - worked tirelessly and in their own time to extensively research and campaign around the issue and succeeded in seeing the High Intensity Network close and getting NHS England (NHSE) to publicly outline their intention to conduct a review of SIM, however, we are yet to see the results of the local reviews NHSE triggered.

This is episode one of two, covering:

- How the campaign and coalition began

- What the campaign strategy was and how it changed

- The cost of the campaign: was it worth it?

Part two, coming on Monday 6th December, will cover:

- What are the moments in the campaign that made the coalition feel proud?

- And finally: if you could wave a magic wand or make a wish, what would make things better?

This podcast comes with a content warning for references to suicide and iatrogenic harm.