I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Western Pacific Regional Advisor at Global Mental Health Action Network!
🌏 I’m honoured to share that I’ve been elected as the Western Pacific Regional Advisor for the Global Mental Health Action Network (GMHAN).
This role is a chance to continue activating on the global stage — from dialogues at the United Nations in New York City to conversations with our country-level UN representatives — ensuring that voices from our region are heard in shaping mental health priorities worldwide.
A heartfelt thank you to everyone who voted for me. The calibre of nominees was incredibly strong, with many leaders who have been active in this space for a long time. I deeply appreciate the trust placed in me to represent our region.
I also carry forward the experience of having previously represented the Western Pacific with the Global Mental Health Peer Network (2018–2021). I hope to bring a strong, lived-experience perspective grounded in advocacy, regional realities, and a vision of collective change.
Here’s to continuing the work of amplifying lived expertise, building connections, and advancing mental health equity across our region and beyond.
#GlobalMentalHealth #LivedExperience #MadStudies #WesternPacific #UN #GMHAN
I finally sourced the Dean's graduation photo at @unimelb , graduating with a H2A in my Masters of Advanced Social Work. 🌈
The proudest moment of my life, it's a shame my family left halfway through. 🌎
But I had my family of choice, as us queers so @sammy_from_hell@andrewmcintosh_ ❤️
Onwards and upwards, with my PhD in Mad studies, the study of users, survivors and Mad olm's history and activism as a social movement in critiquing psychiatry, 'normality', 'sanity' and Sanism, and highlighting the social and structural context in which we respond to with distress responses that are pathologised in a health economics system that centres profit and capitalism over welfare and humanity in the approaches we use to support our community globally. Oop mic 🎤 drop x
Truth to power, my Mad pride community ✊💜🩷
Love you Sam and Andrew ❤️🎢🔥🎆💲✨
#familytrauma #complextrauma
It's official, in my paid capacity as a Lived Experience Consultant for activities following the implementation of the World Health Organization Framework for Meaningful Engagement of people living with Non Communicable Diseases, Mental Health and Neurological conditions I was invited to publish an opinion analysis on psychiatry, Queerness and society for healthcare professionals for the British Medical Journal. ❤️
Finally, one year on after much feedback, editing and dialogue ha! it's moving forward for publication.. 🔥
---------------------------------------------------
"BMJ-2023-078107.R1 - Society is our Queer Disorder: There is no alleviation of LGBTIQA+ distress, vulnerability and divergence without a structural analysis and response in mental health.
----------------------------------------------------
Dear Dr. Jackman, (lol)
Your accepted article has been passed to our production department for processing...." 🌈
----------------------------------------------------
This is probably my life's greatest achievement and has taken a decade of activism leading to this, including the co-design and development, and now implementation for the international framework aforementioned.
We need lived experience folk, trained in our consumer perspective and peer relational practices, in public health roles and I hope I am contributing to opening spaces as others have done before me 🌍
I hope you're proud 🦚
Check it out below:
https://lnkd.in/g9T_rESQ
#livedexperience #criticalpsychiatry #mentalhealth #structural #worldhealthorganisation #homophobia #transphobia #ncds #leadership #queer
🌍 Live from Geneva: GMHAN at the 79th World Health Assembly!
Global Mental Health Action Network (GMHAN) members are on the ground at #WHA79, making sure mental health remains at the very top of the global health agenda.
Following the historic commitments made at the 2025 UN High-Level Meeting (HLM4), this week is all about accountability. We’re here to ensure Member States turn those promises into concrete, life-changing action.
👇 Watch the video below to hear from Divya, Tiwa, and Matt as they share their hopes for this pivotal week ahead.
🚨 Plus, a major campaign launch: Care Not Custody
Tomorrow, in partnership with United for Global Mental Health, we are officially launching a major new campaign focused on deinstitutionalisation. Whether you are here in Geneva, or tuning in from anywhere in the world, we’d love for you to in the room with us. Scan the QR codes on screen to attend.
Let’s make mental health for all a reality. Follow along all week for updates!
We are campaigning for 'Care not Custody' for people living with distress and mental health difficulties that are institutionalised.
Join the de-institutionalisation movement and put an end to abusive, violent and neglectful mental hospitals for humane crisis alternatives in the community, and just societies that address the social and structural detminants necessary for inclusive communities of mental and emotional differences.
Please come to the event if in Geneva or watch online with the QR code.
#who #unitednations #endforcedpsychiatry #deinstitutionalisation
Been a long few years of pretty rough mental health, then straight into a lot of travel for advocacy and research.
Coming back and having community again has meant more than I expected.
Already 💕 being a co socials chair for the team and creating a warm and inviting environment to get lit. 🤪💀
Emerald City Kickball has been such a good reminder of what that feels like — just showing up, having a laugh, being around good people.
Also says a lot that I still miss last season’s team… this community is something special. 🏳️🌈
Glad to be back.🌏
Go simply the zest 🍊
Any queers looking for community, sign up to the next season with @eckickballmelb
#QueerCommunity #MadPride #EmeraldCityKickball
🎥 Edited INTERVIEW OUT NOW – with The Archive on Intergenerational Mental Health and Trauma | The Personal is Political
🔗 https://youtu.be/w1WWeYNHUpM?si=R3Qyp_FBaga-x8B7
In this conversation I share what madness means to me — through the deeply personal experiences of family, suicide, complex grief and trauma that have shaped my life.
Out of this pain and reckoning, I found a path into human rights activism — politicising my story in the global movement for critical psychiatry, Mad Studies and Mad Pride.
✨ In the full hour-long interview I talk about:
• Living through loss and complex trauma
• What it means to reclaim madness as identity, wisdom and survival
• Why Mad movements matter for justice and change
• How lived experience becomes a force for global advocacy
This isn’t just my story — it’s part of a larger fight for recognition, dignity and rights.
💬 I’d love to know what resonates for you — drop a comment or share your reflections.
📣 Please share with others who believe mental health is more than diagnosis: it’s story, struggle and collective power.
#MadStudies #MadPride #CriticalPsychiatry #HumanRights #LivedExperience #MadnessAndMeaning #GlobalMentalHealth #TraumaAndGrief
✨ World Mental Health Day ✨
I once took a photo from inside a psych ward, wondering if life was over after years of grief, trauma, bullying & imposter syndrome broke me. Psychiatry helped at times, but it also confined, pathologised & excluded me.
Madness became my rebellion. Mania carried me into international spaces, where my truth challenged psychiatry’s dominance. My madness has made me — taking me into human rights policy to fight sanism & champion lived experience as expertise.
Most importantly, I’ve found my tribe in the Mad movement(s) — identity, pride, belonging & community. 💜
On this day, I call for madness to be seen as deeply human: grief, trauma, rebellion, spirit, culture, identity. Not illness. Hold space for madness. Honour its wisdom. Build Mad-affirming communities.
Lots of Mad love,
Matt
#MadPride #WorldMentalHealthDay #MadStudies #LivedExperience
✨ Happy Melbourne-versary & almost-anniversary, Andrew! ✨
Two years ago, you came from Scotland to Melbourne, and what a ride it’s been. From the very start, you’ve been my favourite Eurasian, the yin to my yang, the budget to my spending sprees, and the risk aversion to my impulsive leaps.
We’ve built a life full of writing marathons, movie nights, and adventures near and far. You’ve been the steady engine behind my enthusiasm and activism, grounding me with your care and your methods to my Madness.
As we come up to our two-year anniversary as well, I’m so grateful for the laughter, the love, and the balance you bring into my life every single day. Here’s to many more years of stories, travels, and shared dreams together ❤️
#Melbourne #Queer #Joy
Graduates of 2023 @unimelb
Love my family @sammy_from_hell and @andrewmcintosh_
Masters of Advanced Social Work!
Mad studies PhD on the way 2027 xxx
🌈❤️🧡🩵💙💚🌎💥🔥🙏🎢🎁
Andrew sent me my Post Graduate Certificate in Mad studies from Queen Margaret University !!! 😍
Qualifications include
MDD, BPAD, C-PTSD, ADHD 🎢 aka responses to trauma and surviving to thriving 👏🔥🫂
Depends on my mood and the shitty psychiatric system and practice of 'support', but it's okay Psychiatrists are so inaccessible and unavailable I don't need to see one #harmreducation 🌈💕💥🔥
Find yourself an amazing General Practitioner who knows their stuff, and doesn't psychiatrise you. They're doctors who are much more community minded and critical of psychiatry. 👏
Follow us on @tacfle for more x
