The Trauma-FREE model is a framework MH Safe founder Dan Berstein developed, after careful consultation with his clinician and support system, to healthily and sustainably engage in large-scale advocacy work despite the frequent stressors including stigma, dismissiveness, and hostility. The infographic below summarizes the model:
Frequently Asked Questions
How does MH Safe act on the SAFER plans from the Future Plans section of the Trauma-FREE model?
MH Safe adds the organization to the MH Safe Changes To Do List with plans to follow the SAFER acronym. MH Safe will act on these SAFER next steps [1] during quarterly reviews to activate new projects, [2] when new colleagues join the work with bandwidth to tackle these projects, or [3] when AI scaling makes new projects simpler to do.
- Surveys: MH Safe offers surveys as a way for people to anonymously document problems at organizations and in publications. For example, our Inappropriate Publications form (https://mhsafe.org/inappropriate-publications/) has led to reports of problematic publications and to edits to them, our SAD Survey for reporting shunning, avoidance, and disparagements (https://mhsafe.org/sad) has been used so bystanders can report these problems, and our Law Firm Mental Health Survey (https://mhsafe.org/lawfirm) has allowed employees at firms to report issues with policies and practices there.
- Awareness: MH Safe provides free addendum content to help people impacted by potentially problematic practices, actors implementing the practices, communities affected by them, and teachers who may want to join in the work of raising awareness. Learn more at https://mhsafe.org/addendum
- Features: MH Safe frequently writes about the experiences of contacting organizations to attempt to convince them to update or remove challenging content, and the positive and negative events that occur along the way. These examples also get included in presentations, case studies, and other projects featuring these stories. You can see some examples at https://mhsafe.org/about
- Empowerment: MH Safe works to provide empowerment groups to provide support for people affected by the problems we have encountered at various organizations. See https://mhsafe.org/empowerment/
- Reports: MH Safe provides resources to help people learn how to report discrimination and address stigma they have experienced. For example, see https:/mhsafe.org/discrimination
Where can I learn more about MH Safe’s goals and methodologies?
To learn more about MH Safe’s advocacy goals and methodologies, visit https://mhsafe.org/changes/ (detailing our campaign for 1,000,000 changes by 2035), https://mhsafe.org/methodology (detailing our LACE and GRACE methodology for collaborating with organizations to update content), and https://mhsafe.org/aim (detailing our more recent adoption of the use of an AI Messenger system).