Otago Mental Health Support Trust

Advocacy is about supporting you to get your voice heard and working through issues that you may encounter with mental health services or organisations such as WINZ.

Our peer support is based on the Intentional Peer Support (IPS) model and is mostly one on one peer support. We also run a women’s group every Wednesday, and a monthly Coffee and Connection group. Peer support relationships are mutual and reciprocal relationships, where staff walk alongside people during their journey and experience with mental distress. It is based on three principles:

• Hope vs Fear
• Learning vs Helping
• Relationship vs Individual

These are embodied in 4 tasks:

Connection: This is about when someone else “gets it”. The sharing of experiences to learn and explore possible options.

Worldview: Helping each other to understand how we’ve come to know what we know. Instead of asking ‘what’s wrong,’ we ask ‘what happened?’

Mutuality: Redefining help as a co-learning and growing process.

Moving Towards: what we want, vision and action.

We have information on support services, medication and research on mental health issues.

You can make use of our free library.

Our friendly staff can help you find the information and knowledge around mental distress you are looking for.

We run workshops on Stigma and Discrimination. If you or your organisation are interested please let us know.