Between the Ward and Home: Community Support of Mental Health
In order to tackle the practical issues while enforcing the Taiwanese Mental Health Act, which was revised in 2007 and came into effect in 2008, legislator Wan-Yu Wang hold an amendment public hearing on Oct. 9th, 2020, echoing the 2020 World Mental Health Day. The law aims to assist patient to live independently and eventually re-integrated into society, however, where government stands to help communities in accommodating people with mental illness was ambiguous. The WFMH Reginal VP Shu-Jen Lu was invited as a guest speaker to share professional insight and advocate the importance of mental health. In her speech, Lu focused on the lack of intentional peer support (IPS) in the law, and elaborated the crucial role IPS played in foreign mental health professionals such as UK, Australia, and Hong Kong. In the end, Lu once again urged the government to increase investment, grant unbiased resource allocation, and hold mental health in high regard.
