The OSI Public Health Program’s Mental Health Initiative aims to ensure that people with mental disabilities (mental health problems and/or intellectual disabilities) are able to live as equal citizens in the community and to participate in society with full respect for their human rights. The Mental Health Initiative focuses on ending the unjustified and inappropriate institutionalization of people with mental disabilities by advocating for the closure of institutions and the development of community-based alternatives. The initiative works in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (read more about the history of mental health policies in this region).

The Mental Health Initiative’s key goals are:

• Capacity-Building: promoting the capacity of people with mental disabilities and the organizations that represent them to participate meaningfully in policy and service development.
• Promoting Access to Education: supporting policy reform in education and provision of inclusive educational services.
• Advocating for Government Commitment: advocating for the creation of financing mechanisms that support inclusive policies.
• Raising Public Awareness: challenging the stigma and discrimination faced by people with mental disabilities by providing information and resources on mental disability and human rights issues.

For over a decade, the Mental Health Initiative has provided sustained and strategic financial and technical support for the development of community-based alternatives to institutionalization in the region. The initiative promotes the principle of “independent living” for people with mental disabilities. Choice, dignity, freedom, and control are at the core of independent living. People with disabilities should have the same freedom to choose as every other citizen; they should be supported in their choices; and they should have opportunities to participate in the everyday activities that people without disabilities take for granted.

In recent years, support from OSI’s Mental Health Initiative has helped introduce community-based service models in the region that allowed some people with mental disabilities to leave institutions, and prevented others from having to enter them. A number of education programs allowed children with mental disabilities to get access to education they otherwise would not have received, and some governments in the region adopted policies that promote the inclusion of people with mental disabilities. Equally important was the work that mental disability NGOs and people with mental disabilities and their families did to become more involved in policy and legislative reform.

In 2007, the initiative joined with the Azerbaijan Ministry of Education to create a pilot project to replace institutional care for children with a community-based system. The “Community Initiative for All: Azerbaijan” project is focused on closing one large institution and relocating children and staff to community settings. In Kyrgyzstan, the Mental Health Initiative joined with Habitat for Humanity to provide decent housing and support services to Kyrgyz families with mentally ill or disabled relatives. The families in the project’s first year live in deplorable conditions—homes with broken doors and no working plumbing. This unprecedented partnership offers an alternative to institutionalizing mentally disabled relatives in decrepit government asylums.

In 2006, the Mental Health Initiative supported Serbia in deinstitutionalizing people with intellectual disabilities and providing them with support services in the community. The government’s commitment was the first of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe. The initiative also launched a $1.5 million project to promote the human rights of people with mental disabilities in Azerbaijan, working with the government to find community-based alternatives to institutions.