Innovations in Mental Health: Expanding Accessibility

Speaker(s):

• 
  Chris Underhill

  Principal of Mentor Services, BasicNeeds

  Chris is a global expert in the delivery of mental health and rehabilitation systems, a social entrepreneur, a mentor, a confidential organizational development advisor, trainer in community-based facilitation technique, and regularly speaker on leadership and social entrepreneurship. A serial entrepreneur, Chris is currently co-founding the Elders Council for Social Entrepreneurs. He has co-founded citiesRISE, a multi-stakeholder initiative to catalyze, connect, and support cities committed to driving change in the field of mental health. Previously he started BasicNeeds, that’s impacted over 800,000 people across 12 countries. He’s also founded Action on Disability and Development and Thrive (Chris’s first charity in 1978 that uses gardening as rehabilitation for people living with disabilities). Chris is a board member of Ashoka UK Trust, a Global Director of Leaders’ Quest and the Chair of Carers Worldwide. He is a Senior Fellow with the Ashoka Fellowship, a recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and was selected as a Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur for 2014. In 2000 Chris received an MBE from the Queen for his services to disability and development. As a global mentor, he works with people in organisational management, models of change in childhood deprivation, human trafficking, the psychology of gangs, Fair Trade, prisons and prisoners, leadership and executive search. You can find out more on Chris’s journey through his TEDx talk “Bridging the Mental Health Gap”.

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• 
  Elaine Miller-Karas

  Co-Founder and Executive Director, Trauma Resource Institute

  Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW, is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Trauma Resource Institute and author of the book, Building Resiliency to Trauma, the Trauma and Community Resiliency Models.® Elaine has co-created the Community Resiliency Model and the Trauma Resiliency Model. She is a licensed clinical social worker and trauma therapist and has traveled internationally, bringing her models to underserved communities. The goal of both models is to help to create “resiliency-informed and focused” communities that share a common understanding of the impact of trauma and chronic stress on the nervous system and how resiliency can be restored or increased using this skills-based approach. The Community Resiliency Model© is a peer-to-peer model that trains the natural leaders of a community to be teachers of the wellness skills. Teachers are encouraged to interweave their cultural lens into the teachings. Research is demonstrating statistically significant reductions in depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms and hostility indicators. The models have been used in the aftermath of human made and natural disasters globally, including Nepal, the Philippines, Haiti, China, Sierra Leone, St. Vincent, St. Martin, Iceland, Northern Ireland, Guatemala, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Turkey, the United States, Germany, Ukraine, and Israel. The models are adaptable, affordable, transportable and accessible.

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