Involvement

Rethink Mental Illness is committed to working in partnership with people who use our services and their carers. The majority of our Board of Trustees are people who have used mental health services or who care for a family member with mental illness. We support members to take part in every aspect of our work.

Our activism programmes ensure that the work we do is based on the real life experiences of those people who are the experts by experience – people who have directly lived with, and been affected by, severe and enduring mental ill health.

We are in a unique position to facilitate the involvement of carers and people who use mental health services in the development of services, policies and legislation that affect them.

For example, we were heavily involved in Lord Bradley’s recent review of the criminal justice system for people with mental illness, and the Department of Health  commissioned us to run a panel with service users and carers to check how well Lord Bradley’s recommendations are being implemented.