Columbia University – WHO Collaborating Center for Global Mental Health
The CU – WHO Collaborating Center for Global Mental Health is an organization based at Columbia University Medical Center that champions innovative research, education and advocacy in global mental health.
Global Action 4 Mental Health
Global Action 4 Mental Health’s vision is to create communities that promote mental health and wellbeing around the globe. Our mission is to provide resources and expertise for the development of sustainable community support for people with serious mental health issues in low- and middle-income countries through the creation of unique community resource centers.
TELL Japan
TELL Japan is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing world-class, effective support and counseling services to Japan’s international community as well as helping to address the country’s growing mental health care needs. The Global Fund for Mental Health has supported volunteer training programs for the TELL Japan Lifeline, has funded training programs for the counseling staff and has provided support for general fundraising needs of the organization. The Global Fund for Mental Health continues to provide philanthropic support to TELL Japan as it continues to provide essential mental health services in Japan.
Billion Minds Institute
The aim of safeguarding population mental health takes on new urgency and relevance in the context of climate change. Often eclipsed by attention to the “hardware” of needed transformation in energy systems, transportation, food sources, etc, is the crucial importance of the “software” of human experience, civic action, and resilience. Advancing a humane and regenerative social climate—the emotional capacity and resilience, collective efficacy, and social ties and supports for human sustainability—will require aggressive new thinking and bold action, and adds urgency to long overdue investment and innovation to right-size approaches for mental health.
To start, doing that has to engage the mass effects of emotional and psychological change and damage at the level literally of billions. It involves answering the question: how do mental health systems and knowledge advance the social climate?–especially as that may well determine whether more aggressive climate policies, technical innovations, and antidotes to an entrenched status quo, will work. These are not the typical starting points of public mental health. They call for new collaborations and partnerships, knowledge and data sharing, tools and policy directions, methods and testable ideas—linking social innovators and mental health innovators.
Billion Minds Institute will be an anchor “think-action tank” to provoke and mobilize content, aims, learning, and policy momentum building blocks for this new field of applied mental health for human sustainability to work and grow. Its key initial objectives and initial projects at the same time involve work with, on the one hand, local groups as co-creators of tools and methods, and on the other hand, high-level leaderships on adopting these needed ambitions and possibilities for the mental health field. Those core objectives are:
- Grow civic power for sustainability and climate response
- Re-engineer mental health work to bolster and protect that
- Sustain the right network(s) and learning to do these things
Other Global Connections
Love is EleMental: A Benefit Cabaret at Joe’s Pub
What better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day then to focus on LOVE?
On Monday evening, February 13, 2023 – prize-winning concert pianist, Elaine Kwon performed with a curated line-up of exceptional talent, many of whom have taken a stand to improve mental health understanding and services in their communities. Love is EleMental honors the arts and mental health and we were thrilled to return to Joe’s Pub after a three-year pandemic hiatus.
2022 Five Boro Bike Tour
The Global Fund for Mental Health bike team made an incredible fundraising effort while helping raise awareness and funds for groundbreaking mental health initiatives around the world. Over 20 riders came out on a beautiful New York day, knowing that their participation would help someone struggling with mental health challenges. We are so grateful to the TD Five Boro Bike Tour and all our many hundreds of supporters. Thank you!
Fit Pro Relief Fund
The Fit Pro Relief Fund has been established by Kathie and Peter Davis and Inspire 360 to aid fitness professionals facing financial hardship due to COVID-19. This fund is for individuals who have fallen the hardest during this crisis. Please click here for complete information: Fit Pro Relief Fund
Healthier, Longer Lives: An International Conference
Many people will celebrate their 80th, 90th, or even 100th birthday — but statistically people with serious mental illness don’t have the same chance at growing old. In fact, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), people living with serious mental illness have a life expectancy that is 10-20 years shorter than average. Fountain House has teamed up with WHO to put an end to that disparity.
Fountain House and the World Health Organization are establishing guidelines and best practices to extend and improve the quality of life for people living with mental illness to be implemented by governments and health care professionals around the world.
Fountain House, in partnership with the WHO collaborating Center for Global Mental Health at Columbia University Medical center, Grand Challenges Canada, and citiesRISE, hosted an international conference, Healthier, Longer Lives for People with Serious Mental Illness on November 8-9, 2018 in New York. The conference will be technically supported by WHO.
Future Fighters
Future Fighters is a psychologically-informed program that engages, empowers, and supports kids to both process and fight climate change. Future Fighters achieves this through a focus on environmental education, opportunities for climate action, and nature connection. Founded in Los Angeles in 2021, Future Fighters has grown to a group of over 50 elementary-aged kids and their families, with bi-monthly meetings and events. Future Fighters have organized beach and neighborhood cleanups, built an educational garden and community composting hub, spoken out about climate justice at City Hall, lobbied their schools for more eco-friendly protocols, petitioned businesses to stop harmful practices, and run successful fundraisers (with funds donated to environmental non-profits). Organized by a psychologist, Larissa Dooley, with expertise in the mental health impacts of climate change, all activities and education are provided in a developmentally appropriate and emotionally sensitive manner. The vision of Future Fighters is to make environmental action an accessible, family-friendly, fun, and normative activity for kids and their families, as well as to help young people and their families build emotional resilience in the context of climate change. By engaging kids and their families in climate action, Future Fighters can help transform young people’s feelings of helplessness and hopelessness about climate change into agency and empowerment.
Although Future Fighters is currently limited to the Los Angeles group, our vision is to make the group replicable and scalable so that it can be implemented in other locations.
