Our work and impact

Building community capacity

We have co-produced community capacity-building sessions. These sessions helped people and organisations develop knowledge and confidence to recognise and challenge mental health stigma and discrimination.

Strengthening partnerships

We made, sustained or influenced community partnerships. These relationships help us reach communities, learn from their experiences and connect anti-stigma work with wider community priorities.

Creating space for different voices

Our partnerships have helped us understand that mainstream approaches do not always work for everyone. Working with communities has influenced how we develop resources, communicate about mental health and create opportunities for people to share their experiences

Using creativity to challenge stigma

Our Anti-Stigma Arts Fund has supported participatory projects that create space for people to explore stigma through art and storytelling. Evaluation and learning from these projects has shown the potential for creative approaches to change perspectives, challenge self-stigma and open up conversations within communities.

Changing how we understand stigma

Our work has strengthened understanding that mental health stigma can be connected to wider systems of inequality and discrimination. This has helped See Me move towards approaches that consider people’s whole experiences, rather than treating mental health stigma as an issue in isolation.

What we have learned

We have learned that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to tackling stigma.

Building trust takes time. Community engagement needs to be flexible and shaped around the needs, culture and experiences of the people involved.

We have also learned that well-intentioned services and organisations can unintentionally exclude people when they do not consider culture, identity, language or wider experiences of discrimination.

This means we need to keep listening, questioning our own practice and sharing power with communities.