FOUNDATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN MENTAL HEALTH CARE, INC

Supporting the expansion of Hearing Voices peer-support groups across the United States, Israel and online. These groups offer a safe place for people to share their experiences of voices, visions, tactile sensations, unshared beliefs, and other distressing experiences. By meeting together to help and support one another, to exchange information, and most importantly to learn from each other’s coping strategies, these groups transform the lives even of people who have suffered for many years. Some people stop hearing voices entirely, while others learn to accept and “live with voices” in ways that enable them to regain more control over their lives.

Open Excellence administers the donor-advised RxISK.org Fund which supports the RxISK mission to "make medicines safer for all of us". Prescription drug side effects are now your most likely source of death, disability, or injury. Experts estimate that only 1–10% of serious adverse events (those causing hospitalization, disability, or death) are ever reported. Not to mention the millions of medically mild adverse drug events that occur each year — ones that compromise your concentration, functioning, judgment, and ability to care.

RxISK is a free, independent website where you can research prescription drugs and report a drug side effect. The resulting RxISK Report provides you with your RxISK Score indicating how likely it is that you are experiencing a drug side effect. This structured tool can help you articulate what is happening to you and determine whether your doctor is listening.

Open Dialogue is a resource-oriented approach for people experiencing a mental health crisis. Developed in Finland, it has shown excellent results: 84% of persons experiencing a first episode psychosis returned to an active social life and only 33% were exposed to neuroleptic medications. Since these results were published, Open Dialogue has gained considerable attention and been adopted in countries around the globe, but implementation and outcomes have not yet been systematically investigated.
HOPEnDialogue is the first international research project to support the development of the approach and the investigation of its efficacy in different settings and cultures. HOPEnDialogue is based at the Italian National Research Council with an international advisory board of twenty-two experts, including researchers, OD clinicians, peers, family members and public health officers.

United Nations special rapporteur Dainius Pūrius wrote in 2017, “We need little short of a revolution in mental health care to end decades of neglect, abuse and violence . . . I am calling on States to move away from traditional practices and thinking, and enable a long overdue shift to a rights-based approach. The status quo is simply unacceptable.”

In partnership with Open Society Foundations, Open Excellence is supporting original international reporting to change the status quo via the webzine MadInAmerica.com, a nonprofit founded by science journalist Robert Whitaker. In addition to coverage of critical issues with the current standard of mental health care and innovations from around the world, madinamerica.com has compiled resources on psychiatric drug safety, efficacy and withdrawal. It also offers information on non-drug therapies, individual and family support groups and a spectrum of voices of people with lived experience and professionals working on innovation and reform.

One in six Britons were taking an antidepressant in 2018. So was the same proportion of American women. Those numbers surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among people who had never taken them before. The increase was even greater in Australia which also saw 31% increase in anti-anxiety drugs. At the same time, there is growing recognition among national standards organizations and the general public that these drugs create physical dependence and side effects that often make withdrawal difficult and sometimes impossible. This has left many people with prolonged or permanent injury and disability. Currently, physicians are not trained in how to safely and effectively assist people to taper and withdraw from these drugs and the few independently developed tapering protocols are not widely known. Open Excellence is supporting the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal in its work to improve practice, research and training in this critical area.

In response to the increased visibility of structural racism, systemic oppression, and police violence, Surviving Race will convene advocates, artists, educators, peer supporters, psychiatric survivors, and white allies to 1). Acknowledge, celebrate, and integrate the legacy of hope, resiliency and vision forged by our ancestors; 2). Examine the impact of structural racism, systemic oppression, and police violence on health disparities and racial trauma experienced by Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC); and 3). Co-create future strategies and implementation steps to counter structural racism, systemic oppression, and police violence against BIPOC.

Open Excellence is a major sponsor of this 4-day forum in Savannah, Georgia in August 2022 to promote justice and healing.