Realising a Good Life for People with Lived Experience of Psychosocial Disability
Making Rights Real is a co-design project that recognises lived experience as the foundation for meaningful change. We’re guided by the UN CRPD (United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities), working to ensure human rights are truly respected and reflected – in policies, in services and in community life.
Understanding Psychosocial Disability
At the heart of this co-design project is a human-rights based understanding of disability. The term psychosocial disability refers to challenges a person faces when their mental health challenges interacts with an unsupportive environment. It’s not about the person, but about the barriers they face – such as discrimination, a lack of accommodations, or unfair treatment. This framework shifts the focus from “fixing” the person to removing the societal barriers that prevent them from truly realising a good life.
Why Change is Needed
Even with mental laws in place, people with living experience of psychosocial disability often experience their human rights being overlooked or violated. This creates unfair situations and experiences that prevent people from living full and meaningful lives. Ultimately, this project recognises that human rights are not given, they are realised when barriers are removed.
Working Together to
Co-create Ways Forward
Our project brings together people with their own experience of mental health challenges. Together, we’re collaborating to identify solutions and develop practices that ensure human rights are upheld, valued and respected in everyday life.
"The role of government is to let people live their own good life to the greatest extent possible. A good life for people will look different, and our system should be equipped to help people author and arrive at that vision."
Our Core Intentions
Empower people living with mental health challenges
Strengthen consumers understanding of the UN CRPD for advocacy.
Building a network of support
Equiping families, carers, service providers and community with an understanding of their roles in upholding these rights.
Exploring ways forward through storytelling
Share stories, highlight systemic barriers and opportunities.
Centre a Good Life Vision
Promote a good life vision grounded in autonomy, inclusion, participation, and dignity.
Inform domestic laws
Inform future policy and systemic reform.
Continuing Conversations
Develop reccomendations for new initiatives that keep thse important conversations going.
Partnership and Collaboration
This project is a collaborative effort supported by the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance (the Alliance). The Alliance is an organisation led by people with lived/living experience of mental health challenges, working for and with mental health consumers (people who are utilising mental health support). We work closely with Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA) to deliver this project and share our findings widely, ensuring voices reach the places where changes happens.
Blogs
When the Front Door is the First Harm
One consumer’s account of what happens when the intake process becomes the first harm — and a direct illustration of why ‘respect as a clinical metric’ is not an abstract principle but an urgent, measurable standard.
The Velvet Rope of Pity
When we experience a difficult interaction – like being pitied or dismissed—we are only seeing the event (the tip of the iceberg above the water). But beneath that surface lie systemic structures (the rules, policies, and gatekeeping) and, at the very bottom, mental models (the deep-seated beliefs that drive everything else).
The following story by Nicola-Jane le Breton illustrates what happens when we look “beneath the waterline” of a single interaction with a General Medical Practitioner (GP).
The Partnership Revolution
On moving from a cage of protection to a safety net of support.
The Expert in the Room is Me
The following story illustrates what happens when we look “beneath the waterline” of a psychiatric diagnosis.
The 28-Day Constraint: How DSP Rules Undermine the Right to Global Movement (Article 18)
Why is financial security conditional on staying in one place? JH, our lived experience writers, highlights a significant systemic barrier: the 28-day DSP (Disability Support Pension) travel limit. This piece examines how such rigid constraints infringe upon the rights of mental health consumers, creating a system where essential financial security is traded for curtailed movement.
Marriage or Money: How the DSP Partner Rule Violates the Right to Safety (Article 23 and 28)
Marriage or Money: How the DSP Partner Rule Violates the Right to Safety (Article 23 and 28)Author: JH Article 23 of the UN Convention on