FUND FOR RELIEF AND DEVELOPMENT

Center for Public Mental Health (CPMH) Maastricht University

The Center for Public Mental Health (CPMH) in Maastricht is a nationally and internationally oriented institute/sub-department of the Department of Psychiatry and Neuro-psychology at the Medical School of Maastricht University (UM). It grew out of its predecessors Social Psychiatry, the International Institute for Psycho-social and Socio-ecological Research (IPSER) and the Int. Consortium Center for Public Mental Health (CCPMH). It is a Collaborative Center for the World Federation of Mental Health (WFMH), a Program of the Academic Ambulatory Mental Health Center (Riagg) in Maastricht and has in its various organizational forms developed projects globally over a 20 year period for a wide range of international and national agencies.

These global network activities include mental health related projects with refugees and displaced people in Uganda, Mozambique, Gaza, Calcutta, Mexico and public mental health, drug abuse and behavioral disorder related projects in Europe and North America as well as consultative projects with WHO, ILO, IOM, UNHCR, UNDP, UNDCP, PlanNL, ICSS, RNTC, the Global Economic and Business Roundtable on Mental Health and Addiction and a partner in WHO’s Nations for Mental Health Program.

After the Tsunami in South East Asia, CPMH has partnered in setting up an international NGO, the Fund for Relief and Development (FRD), in Sri Lanka to facilitate relief, research and development work. FRD will collaborate as CPMH’s global partners on a number of international projects in the future focusing on research development and implementation of mental health and human (child) development programs related to trauma, mobile/uprooted populations, drug and behavioral problems using evaluative and innovative research, as well as media and public mental health developmental models. FRD thus builds on previous international IPSER/CPMH/UM research and networks.

Given the growing global burden of disease due to mental disorders heralded by UN agencies, particularly in younger age groups, CPMH's current mission is to develop public mental health strategies that empower and tool up governments and people to enhance their mental health programs in order to build resilience for periods of stress and vulnerability such as personal loss, social change, natural and man-made disasters. A mass media communication component is central in this process and accordingly CPMH has recruited experts in the domain of international developmental media and prevention.

Currently models for multi-sector PMH responses to disaster, chronic vulnerability and daily life stress as well as coping with mental illness when it strikes are core activities with particular focus on children and youth. Projects have been carried out internationally and are currently underway or being developed in East Africa, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Greece and the Netherlands in an attempt to develop interventions, models and research that provide public mental health information for use by governments and citizens alike under a variety of cultural and economic conditions.

CPMH, semi-autonomous in its international work, functions as part of the University of Maastricht international agenda, accordingly accounting for CPMH projects is carried out through University administration offices and the MUNDO - the international education institute of the University with whom CPMH is in close collaboration.