We have recently become a regional partner of "Safe Harbor", USA. This project, started in 1998, serves as the hub of thinking on "Alternative Mental Health", and is based in Los Angeles, California.

What is "Alternative Mental Health" (AMH)?

In India, as elsewhere, mental health treatments are primarily based on the medical model (medication and electro-shock). CAMH and Safe Harbor share a common agenda in not only questioning the politics of the psychiatric model, but also in creating awareness and information about non-medical, holistic alternatives in mental health. We believe that AMH opens up a diversity of approaches leaving the choice to individuals. AMH promotes self-determination and allows people to have better control over decisions about their own mental well-being.

We consider AMH to offer promotional, preventative, non-hazardous and positive healing opportunities to people with a psychosocial disability. The growing knowledge on AMH informs us that AMH strategies may be effectively used not only as supportive or supplementary to medical treatment. They may also be used as stand-alone treatments for many common psychological afflictions.

Sometimes, organic or physical problems may present with psycho-pathological symptoms (e.g. severe anaemia, vitamin deficiency, or a hormonal problem such as hypothyroidism). Given the way the health care systems are organized and managed, such problems are frequently missed out. Users of health care may get treated unnecessarily for a psychiatric problem, while the primary health problem may get missed out. We consider this to be in the domain of AMH also.

AMH approaches:

In alternative approaches to mental health, we include the mindful use of
	body therapies (e.g. nutritional therapy, acupuncture, massage)
	art therapies (music, dance, theatre, story telling, visual media, etc.)
	breathing based mind-body techniques (yoga, meditations)
	user-led self help groups, counselling and psycho-therapies
	alternative forms of medical treatments (e.g. homeopathy, naturopathy, ayurveda)
	Along with these, we strongly advocate that basic medical or health problems should be detected (e.g. reproductive problems or hormonal problems) and corrected before planning a psychiatric treatment.

About Safe Harbor:

Safe Harbor is a non-profit organization founded in response to the growing public concern about the unwanted effects of psychiatric treatments. It conducts an educational medical conference every year, on the theme of "Non-pharmaceutical approaches to mental disorders". It has established an annual Lighthouse Award for leaders in safe mental health treatment. It offers free consultations for people or groups seeking alternative treatments. It talks to groups and government agencies in the U.S. about alternatives. It runs a highly respected free online monthly newsletter, "The Alternative Mental Health News". It is currently running projects to improve the quality of psychiatric systems. For more information about Safe Harbor, visit the website: www.AlternativeMentalHealth.com

AMH in India:

CAMH, the research center of Bapu Trust, is the Pune (India) chapter of AMH. Our library and documentation center carries a wide variety of books, reports and audios on AMH. Included in our book acquisitions, are topics related to coming off psychiatric drugs and detoxification. We also brought out a report of a 3-day workshop we conducted on "Alternative Mental Health". We are collecting resources on relevant AMH topics for our library. We organize monthly lectures or seminar presentations on AMH. With a firm belief in a holistic care approach, we recently started a psycho-therapy program for women called Seher (meaning 'dawn'). Seher offers AMH as a possibility to individual users of its services.

Our contact:

AMH (Pune/India) is co-ordinated by Ramya Anand and Deepra Dandekar, at Bapu office. Daya Patwardhan volunteers time to the activity. Do contact them for more information and news.

Safe Harbor Main Office 1718 Colorado Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90041, USA. Phone: 001-323-2577338 Fax: 001-323-2577014 Email: SafeHarborProj@aol.com Web: www.alternativementalhealth.com

Bapu Trust Kapil Villa, Plot no. 9 Survey No. 50/4, Kondhwa Khurd Pune-411048 Tel: 020-26837644/47 Email: wamhc@dataone.in; info@camhindia.org