Péter Kéri: Patients at the centre of mental health care

Struggling with illnesses put patients on a long, and sometimes hard, path to healing. Struggling with mental illnesses, which are often invisible and burdened with stigma, brings unexpected obstacles on patients’ journeys and experiences. How can their involvement in care help their recovery? We asked Peter Keri, president of GAMIAN-Europe, a prominent voice for patients struggling with their mental health in Europe.
 
People struggling with mental illnesses are significantly burdened in their healing by circumstances that surround and affect them, leading them to more struggles and hampering their full recovery. Listening to them and involving them in decisions over their care is crucial to remove these barriers and obstacles – stigma being the most important of them, leading to self-doubt, social exclusion, lack of access to care, and slowing the recovery process.
 
Although the Covid-19 pandemic was wrongly defined as a “mental health pandemic” – mental health struggles aren’t communicable diseases, after all – the increased discourse about the effects on mental health of lockdowns and living through difficult times helped normalized conversations around mental health. Raising awareness, however, is not enough: to improve the conditions of patients who struggle with mental ill-health, policymakers need to enact concrete policies.
 
What does the experience of a person affected with mental health conditions look like nowadays? Are patients listened to, both in healthcare and by policymakers? How does stigma, an all-encompassing, multi-faceted issue, affect the recovery journey of patients? How can advocates go beyond awareness raising to enact a true change? Peter Keri will get rid of all of your doubts in this episode of the Europe Health Podcast.
 
🗣SPEAKER
 
Péter Kéri is the President of GAMIAN-Europe, a pan-European organisation, representing the interests of persons affected by mental illness.
 
Mr Kéri worked for several years in advanced travel management, which led to a decade-long career organizing specialized group travel for multinational companies. His life changed when, at 43 years of age, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia: this experience led him on a healing journey where he understood the importance of raising awareness on the experiences of patients struggling with their mental health.

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