The “Mielekäs Muutos” (Meaningful Change) project by the art and mental health association Taiteen Sulattamo is collaborating with the City of Helsinki’s psychiatric outpatient clinics. Their goal is to develop a service counselling model that fosters cooperation between social and healthcare services and non-profit associations. As part of this development, the project has investigated the current state of collaboration from the perspectives of recoverers, psychiatric care workers, and non-profit association workers.
Cooperation between municipal and regional services and non-profit associations is guided by Finnish law. This law stipulates that municipalities and regions must secure and support associations’ conditions to provide services and make an impact. While psychiatric care workers who responded to the Mielekäs Muutos project surveys stated that they systematically and regularly guide their patients to associations, only 52% of recoverers reported receiving counselling about association activities from their psychiatric care worker. Of those, 43% felt the counselling was timely, and 38% felt it met their needs and wishes.
100% of recoverers wanted to receive information about association activities in their local area as part of their psychiatric care. Furthermore, 67% wished to explore options together with their own workers. When it came to information delivery, 62% preferred to receive information in writing during appointments, and 57% preferred it orally. Recoverers also expressed a desire for psychiatric care workers to track whether the counselling provided yielded results and if the recoverer had engaged in meaningful association activities.
Psychiatric care workers believe that current structures don’t provide sufficient guidance for collaborating with non-profit organisations, and resources are limited. A lack of comprehensive knowledge about association activities often leads to workers’ personal beliefs, attitudes, and motivation influencing where they guide their patients. On the other hand, they recognise underutilised resources within their own organisations, such as peer experts and home-delivered services. These resources often remain unused because workers either don’t remember them or are unsure how to leverage them effectively.
A new network, bringing together psychiatric care workers and associations, began its operations in Helsinki in May 2025. The network’s purpose is to increase cooperation and knowledge about association activities in Helsinki. The Taiteen Sulattamo Mielekäs Muutos project will share the developed counselling model with this network in 2025.
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