Application to the Swedish Fund Allmänna Arvsfonden 20th June 2006

Rooms Within is a permanent meeting-place for people with mental disabilities, the public, and professionals – a central place in Gothenburg with room for debates, a reference library, exhibitions, artifacts and stories from the psychiatry of today and yesterday – with the possibility of influencing the present and future view we take of what it means to be human.

Rooms Within is an open forum for the future, with the focus on what it is like to live with mental disabilities in the present, but also in the past and in the future. It is a centre that will be created and run by people with mental disabilities, who carry on a debate in society from their own perspective and with their own abilities through the aid of exhibitions and programmed activities.

We create a “safe public spot” open to the public where a dialogue is carried out in a dignified way with mentally disabled people as experts in their own field.

People who themselves have suffered from mental illness should be allowed to make use of their civic rights and take part in the discussions in society. But it is also important that various agents with the task of forming the psychiatry of the present and the future are given the opportunity to meet.

At the same time, Rooms Within is a centre for the education of the public, with special thought having been given to immigrants and their relationship to mental disabilities.

Our vision is of a physical place in the centre of the city, a house where the history of psychiatric care comes to life, the present is explored and experienced, and the future is influenced – a place where focus throughout is on “the creative and feeling” human being.

Background

At Gyllenkroken, people with mental disabilities are referred to as “participants”, not patients.

Gyllenkroken is run by the participants themselves. It was started by the Swedish Schizophrenia Society with the economic support of Allmänna Arvsfonden.

Gyllenkroken is separate from public institutions such as psychiatry and the social services. Rules and the content of the programme are decided by the participants themselves with the aid of instructors in small groups and in larger meetings. The target group is people with mental disabilities.

In the last few years, we at Gyllenkroken have been working more and more with large-scale extrovert projects, such as the theatre project “Voices” in collaboration with Teater Uno in Gothenburg. Another such project was “Projekt Form”, where public artworks were made for the new psychiatric clinic at Östra Sjukhuset in Gothenburg. Both of these projects were economically supported by Arvsfonden.

In the projects, the participants work together with instructors and experts in a safe environment with qualified tasks. This way of working has been very successful and has resulted in the need for a permanent public place, with a more extrovert programme, where the participants now have the courage to stand up and speak about themselves and their situation. They are ready to meet their fellow human beings.

Ten years have now passed since the major psychiatric reform here in Sweden. What was neglected then was to thoroughly inform and prepare society for how the people released from psychiatric institutions work. Today, fears and prejudices have not diminished; on the contrary. And things are made even worse by the media.

In spite of the fact that as many as a quarter of the Swedish population will fall ill in a crisis/psychosis requiring the help of psychiatry, families are always surprised. Most people recover, but about two per cent will remain psychotic. There is still very little knowledge and no preparedness for mental illness among ordinary people in present-day Sweden. Lack of knowledge fosters fears and prejudices. Large-scale advertising was not enough.

It is in the direct meeting between people that prejudices are overcome. This takes place in the physical meeting eye to eye. What we wish to create is a physical place for increased understanding.

Gyllenkroken’s EU project Gröna Oasen (The Green Oasis, a café and second-hand store) at Torpa in Gothenburg is a good example of how an initially negative attitude from people in the area after a period of natural meetings was transformed into a cozy and friendly atmosphere where the activities have become profitable.

In today’s Sweden, we have created meeting houses which are like isolated islands in society. Obviously, these are still needed – the need is great – but it is now time to go one step further, time for the mentally disabled to assume the central role, time for understanding, time for human meetings.

We must never forget things like insulin shocks, lobotomies, sterilizations, and isolation. But neither must we forget the life force and the creativity which have existed even during the harshest of conditions. We have museums documenting the Jewish Holocaust, but the history of our own psychiatry is locked away in storehouses.

Target group

The project has three main target groups. (We also have the ambition to include the immigrant’s perpective throughout.)

• The mentally disabled – as participants in the project, in experience groups etc.
• Young mentally disabled people – through creating various employment opportunities
• The public – visitors to the museum, students, and participants in lectures, seminaries etc.

Rooms Within is aimed at people with severe mental disabilities, which requires a high staff ratio.

Mental illness is cyclic. Sometimes one feels well and can function almost “normally”; and sometimes one does not feel well and can hardly function at all. These cycles might be longer or shorter. Sometimes it fluctuates throughout one single day. Therefore, we work with flexible groups with the continuous support of instructors.

Among the day centres in Gothenburg and Mölndal, there is a wish to collaborate to create a public meeting place where one can work at one’s own pace when one feels well enough. During down-periods, one can retreat back to one’s day centre or have a talk with one of the instructors. This gives rise to a pulse undulating between extrovert work and a safe environment. Rooms Within will be the meeting place which unites and enthuses.

The desire among the participants is for wage labour, and in the fully-developed centre we wish to make possible different forms of employment. This will be in collaboration with various Swedish public agents such as Arbetsförmedlingen and Försäkringskassan. For our target group, there is a great lack of employment opportunities in a safe environment with qualified tasks for wage labour (which is what is most hotly desired) but also work with so-called “lönebidrag” (a subsidy) and various forms of occupational training.

The time has come to offer the possibility for the participants to leave the adapted environments and to give them the opportunity to take yet a further step towards re-entry into society in places which are still safe but which are more demanding and more like the real labour market.