The Wellbeing Foundation

Mission Statement

Psychological distress is a valid human experience and no-one is immune. It has a cause, a context and a timeline. To call human suffering a disease, something pathological, is deluded. The biological model of psychological distress has no basis in science; it takes away from the equation between 'healer', sufferer and society the need for understanding, compassion, healing, prevention and social and political change. The medicalisation of problems of living has to stop. We have a collective duty of care to bring about the destruction of psychiatry in its present form.

Human beings are not unbreakable. Countless millions worldwide have been broken in mind and spirit by psychiatric practices; turned into zombies by years of hospitalisation, by lobotomies, by repeated shock 'treatments' and by years of medication. They have lived out their lives as institutionalised slaves, their inner light extinguished.

Instead of the biological-medical model of psychological distress, with its emphasis on brain chemistry as the 'cause' of 'illness', the Wellbeing Foundation approach is holistic, existential and humanitarian.

This humanitarian approach can usher in an era of prevention of mental distress, from which will follow a multitude of innovative changes.

These include, among many others, the creation of learning environments for our children which equip them with personal, emotional and interpersonal skills, which help them learn and know how to take personal responsibility for their minds and bodies, thus enabling them to live creatively and happily in their world. For those experiencing psychosocial distress in the present, it paves the way for crisis intervention centres, therapeutic communities, and various forms of psychological rehabilitation.

Central to the Wellbeing Foundation approach is the concept of human sustainability, which focuses on and embraces the unique response each individual makes to life's challenges, and the contribution which community and the ending of isolation can make to healing.

The foundation was formed in 2006 to address the parlous state of the mental health services in Ireland, to carry out research and education programmes, and to deal with specific issues faced by those who find themselves having to use these services.