Sweden won the EFPT Award for Excellence 2016 for their project “Mental Health Run”
On World Mental Health Day 2015, almost 1200 people took 5 million steps to to raise awareness of mental health disorders in Sweden.
The project called “Mental Health Run” is a charity run to raise awareness of psychiatric disorders and to raise money for organizations and initiatives improving mental health. It started as an idea from Anna Malmqvist, a member of STP, the Swedish federation of psychiatric trainees. In this unique project representatives from STP worked with the Swedish Psychiatric Association and two patient organizations called Suicide Zero and Hjärnkoll. More than 20 000€ was raised and stories of people with experience of psychiatric illness were shared through texts and films on social media, that was seen by up to 25 000 people. The homepage provided information on psychiatric disorders and the two biggest newspapers in Sweden wrote about the project.
This year even more organisations have joined the project, which is also spreading to other cities in Sweden.
By working closely together, there was a mutual exchange of ideas and knowledge between the organisations and this has led to spin-off effects even outside the project.
STP is proud to be acknowledged with the EFPT award for excellence for the initiative of and work with Mental Health Run. As we are currently preparing for the race of 2016, we are very happy to get the chance to promote Mental Health Run in Europe and would be glad to see Mental Health Run spreading across Europe.
With flexible prices, the option to walk or run and an overall appreciation of people’s differences we’ve tried to create a place where everyone feels welcome. We warmly welcome everyone interested to join us in the race in Stockholm on the 8th October 2016 to take more steps for awareness on mental health!
For more information, visit the web page or Facebook page (both in Swedish).
Thanks to Oxford University Press, the delegates of STP (Swedish National trainee association), as winners of the EFPT Award for Excellence 2016, were awarded a copy of Fiorillo et al. “Psychiatry in Practice: Education, Experience and Expertise” and Bloch et al. “Psychiatry: Past, Present and Prospect”.