Stopstigma.cz involving peer counselors

Project full name:

Creating of internet multidiscipliniary counselling and destigmatization webpage platform

Podpořeno grantem z Norska
Supported by a grant from Norway

Since 2005, the Centre for Mental Health Care Development runs the website www.stopstigma.cz, which focuses on destigmatization of a topic of mental illness. The website also involves psychiatric and psychological counselling service, which is free, anonymous  and available from the whole Czech Republic. The site is frequently visited (more than 100,000 unique visits a year) and the counselling service takes hundreds of questions a year (900 in 2014).
The aim of the project is to expand the functioning of the counselling service by engaging 10 peer counselors - people with their own experience with mental health problems. The perspective of a peer counselor can thus be a suitable supplement or alternative to the mental health expert's perspective (a psychologist or psychiatrist). Engaging the peer counselors should contribute to reducing the availability level of the counselling service for people dealing with mental health issues in themselves or in their surroundings. At the same time, engaging the people with their own experience with mental health problems supports the idea of destigmatization. The counselor team will be expanded by the psychologist's expertise.
Among other activities of the project are content updates of the website www.stopstigma.cz (adding the topics of destigmatization and recovery) and shooting videos with authentic testimony of the people with mental illness about their path to recovery. The project follows the activities of the Centre for Mental Health Care Development related to engaging people with their own experience with mental illness into the care system, i.e. so-called peer projects.
The expert partner of the project is Buskerud and Vestfold University College in Oslo. The project is supported by grant from Norway

Time frame: 15 April 2015 – 30 April 2016
Contact: Petra Kubinová, project manager, kubinova@cmhcd.cz, +420 774 393 704