Train The Trainer — National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse

The Freedom Self-Advocacy Curriculum

Self-advocacy is essential to empowerment. By learning to advocate for ourselves, we can take control of our own recovery and assert our rights. Many organizations strive to teach self-advocacy to individuals with mental health conditions, but until recently there has been no national self-advocacy curriculum designed specifically for this purpose.

The National Mental Health Consumers' Self-Help Clearinghouse has developed the Freedom Self-Advocacy Curriculum as a tool to help you learn to be a better self-advocate and to teach self-advocacy skills to others. Working in conjunction with the National Mental Health Association (now Mental Health America), the National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems (now the National Disability Rights Network), and other organizations as well as peer advocates, we have developed a set of three workshops that you can learn to teach.

All of the workshop materials are available free for download below. The Clearinghouse is available to provide technical assistance regarding any of the workshop materials. Clearinghouse staff are also available to provide training in teaching the workshops with Freedom Training Institutes.

Download Workshop Materials: (Please note that all materials are in PDF format, if you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader it can be downloaded here.)

The Freedom Curriculum is based on a "train the trainer" model. Your organization's staff and volunteers can learn how to teach the three Freedom Self-Advocacy Workshops to peers in your community.

The Freedom Self-Advocacy Curriculum

Email is the only way to contact the Clearinghouse: Write to selfhelpclearinghouse@gmail.com or use the form below. We regret that, at this time, we cannot respond to phone messages.

If you are looking for a warmline, please go to http://www.warmline.org/