GMHAN at the UN HLM: Hear from Maria Divina O’Brien
Maria Divina O’Brien
CEO, Mindwise Project (Trinidad and Tobago)
Can you share a bit about your background and the work you’re doing in mental health, and how it connects to the UN HLM on NCDs and Mental Health?
My name is Maria O'Brien and for the past few years I have been a champion and Lived Experience Advocate for NCDs and Mental Health and Neurological Conditions with a focus on the Caribbean and Small Island Developing States - our world’s most vulnerable to Climate Change. I serve as the Focal Point for Voices of SIDS, on the WHO Symposium for Meaningful Engagement Steering Committee, as the founder and Co Director of Mindwise Project - a non profit in Trinidad and Tobago focused on increasing accessibility to mental health resources and services for our local community and internationally. I am also the country lead for the Lived Experience Advisory Board for INTREPID III, which is a research project focusing on Psychosis in the Global South.
All of this work has revealed to me the unmet needs of our public health system and how they directly affect patients and persons in crisis. As an innovator, I also tune into the extraordinary possibilities for disruption in these spaces. However, the enabling environment for sustainable development and solutions is currently poor due to the barriers on the governmental and international level, where the demands of politics are rising above the needs of our peoples. It is in these high level spaces, at these closed door rooms, that much of the world’s health reality is decided. This is why we are ensuring mental health and NCDs are represented and our voices raised - to speak for the millions who cannot be here to speak for themselves; those in waiting rooms, hospital beds and hospice beds. Leaving no one behind. That's what these meetings mean to me.
From your perspective, why is it critical for world leaders to prioritise mental health alongside other global health and development issues at UN HLM?
I do believe that unhealed trauma in politics, in leadership, on every level of society is the PRIMARY reason why social innovations and interventions cannot be sustained, as we watch important impact programmes become old headlines that are forgotten, buried under the waves of new trauma and violence - of all kinds, every day.
The healing of trauma helps us to understand ourselves so we can self heal and also understand our inner and outer worlds in a way that revolutionizes our empathy and understanding of what matters most in our community. When we put mental health first, we put our inner world health and wellbeing first, and then radical practice and new beliefs can radiate, from inside out, for sustainable, lasting change in all sectors of society from our living rooms to the parliamentary sittings that govern our worlds.
If global leaders make strong commitments on mental health at the UN HLM, how would that advance mental health in your country?
While funding is important, belief/trust and stigma, are the biggest barriers to the shift that is needed for holistic health programming. The stigma we are fighting in our local communities goes right up to the top of the ladder. It is critical for those in power to see world leaders, who set the standard, commit to mental health and publicly advocate for countries to take steps to include mental health and suicide prevention programming in their social development initiatives. We must equip those who are shaping public health with the rationale and the defense for new policies, new structures, all built with Persons with Lived Experience and patients at the center. Give our communities a real chance for progress, and help us MAKE THE WORLD BELIEVE that there is NO health without mental health.
Maria’s call to action
Every 40 seconds, we lose someone to suicide. Hopelessness has gripped our world. World leaders please give us something to believe in - to hope for. Let's build a future that is not only better, but that can last.
Learn more about how GMHAN has been convening the sector and amplifying the voices of national partners to influence the outcomes of the HLM on NCDs and Mental Health.