Workshops
The Leadership and Capacity-Building Workshop on Community-Based Mental Health Care and Support
7-10 January 2025 Tokyo, Japan
Summary
The leadership and capacity-building workshop on community-based mental health care and support was held from January 7th to 10th, 2025, at the National Institutional of Mental Health, National Centre of Neurology and Psychiatry, Japan, with a delegation from the Philippines.
The primary purpose of this workshop is for the delegation to get familiar with the actual situation of community mental health initiatives in Japan while examining the specific challenges and necessary actions for community-based mental health in their own regions and roles and incorporating them into an action plan for future initiatives. The content of the workshop was carefully reviewed based on the information gathered during the field visit to the Philippines in September 2024.
Before coming to Japan, many participants were concerned about the cold winter weather. However, the four days were so engaging and dynamic that the cold was soon forgotten.
Main topics and activities:
- Overview of community-based mental health system in Japan
- Core principles of community-based mental health care
- Disaster mental health
- Suicide prevention measures
- Child & youth mental health: focusing on suicide prevention & peer support
- Learning Case Management through Case Scenarios
- Leadership skills
- Stakeholder collaboration strategies
- Dialogues with Tokorozawa-city outreach team
- A courtesy visit and dialogues with Mr.Masatoshi Onozuka, the mayor of Tokorozawa-city
Taking into consideration their respective roles, the participants discussed what they could do from their standpoints to address various challenges, such as collaboration with multiple organizations and professions, and how non-specialists in mental health can be involved in CBMH.
At the end of the workshop, each group created a three-year action plan for future initiatives and exchanged words of encouragement with one another.