Global Organisational Mental Health Management Development

Do you have global matrixed teams that would benefit from practical organisational mental health management development?

In the last few years, I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the world’s largest and best-known household names either under NDA or just respectful silence. Within this I’ve been working with a couple of global clients to develop a mental health training programme that can be delivered around the world in organisations at all levels. Training that gets past many of the perceived challenges we hear and come across all the time as practitioners in this space.

I was being asked to delivery training and development to broad geographical teams and what existed was not fit for purpose. Existing mental health training courses are typically localised by country and language, have a solely Western bio-medical philosophy driven by the global mental health movement (GMHM), and rarely if ever touch topics like ethics or cultural beliefs and certainly don’t bring together people across the planet to explore safely and with deep curiosity what they hold in common and what they do not.

This programme has now been delivered to, and scrutinised by clinical psychologists, medical doctors, occupational health nurses, SHE professionals, HR professionals, business leaders, those with complex lived experiences and every other organisational specialism I can currently think of.

We have tested and delivered this remotely with pan regional and local groups in Europe, the span of the Middle East, across pretty much the entire African continent, the Americas and Asia Pacific, and specifically in countries including South Korea, India, and Vietnam.

A few of the challenges we’ve faced and overcome include:

The W.H.O. and American Psychiatric Association models of mental health need to be taught but are only one way of thinking and do not always relate outside of Western cultures. Therefore, balancing different cultural viewpoints, and personal experiences, and exploring these through different lenses has been intensely educational and rewarding.
Introducing and working with a globally understandable ethical framework derived from the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which to work safely, and which can help with decision making even in the most complex scenarios.
Navigating the highly sensitive natures of crisis, trauma, and suicide around the world and having a consistent protocol for keeping people safe even when the pervading local culture is unforgiving or outwardly hostile.
Awareness of the disparate nature of professional resources, their foundational premise and philosophy, and their varied availability and applications.
Finding ways to openly and with great respect and curiosity share different belief systems, languages, legal, religious, and spiritual practices.
Learning which words exist, or don’t in different languages and the impact of these on the speaker, the listener and even the wider society.
Teaching of systems theory in a way that can be easily understood and employed, training a methodology that can be used confidently, and working with the fundamental nature of boundaries and how to recognise and work with them. And much more.

This naturally is designed for organisations who want to bring together people across vast landscapes, employees who work together in matrixed ways, who can learn from each other’s experiences and viewpoints, and who will look out for each other even if they are on different continents.

If you want to know more just drop me a note, happy to share more individually.