Practical Advocacy Methods – Mental and Substance Use Health
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| Advocacy Made Easy |
When I first wrote this piece, I put all the reasons to advocate for mental and substance use health at the beginning of the article. The whole point for writing this is to give people direct and practical tools for advocacy, so I’ve moved all the reasons to the end. I hope you’ll still read to the finish. Understanding why can make a big difference in our motivation. Anyway, let’s jump right in and see the how-tos. You can leave the why part until later.
You might feel making change happen seems impossible. There are days when I too ask myself, “what’s the point?”, however, I’m a starfish guy, and I need you to be starfish driven as well. (If you need the rest of the starfish story, look me up on Facebook and send me a PM – I’ll fill you in <grin>) Anyway, that means that one of the most significant ways we can make change happen is to be active advocates for mental and substance use health.
Let’s start with social media, specifically Facebook. Did you know Facebook represents 80% of all social media on the planet? Facebook is all about posting what we’re up to in our lives and our perspective communities. There are lots of people posting excellent advocacy material. It could be as simple as an anti-stigma meme, harm reduction info, or even copies of letters they’ve written to all the various levels of government or health authorities. Posting what you’re up to gives other people ideas, generates initiative and dare I use that often overused word, synergy. The influence of many spreads wider, with less energy and more effectiveness when we exploit synergy.
Posting your advocacy allows other people to use your work without the energy needed to create it themselves. That’s incredibly powerful!. Along with this gift, one additional crucial step is the most important. Those (other) people have to do something with these posts. That’s You!
When we overlay information we receive on top of synergy, we have the foundation to drive expediential change. But, to make it all work, we need one last step. That’s advocacy itself, which is where you come in.
Advocacy is officially a noun. It does nothing but lay around gathering dust until we turn it into action. To advocate means to support a cause or policy publicly. Sometimes that takes getting off our butts and doing something. It also can involve risk, which might require us to be courageous.
I guarantee that others publish their advocacy work to educate AND so that others like you can easily utilize it for your own advocacy. In other words, they have done all the work so that you can effortlessly add your voice to our mental and substance use health cause.
Let’s look at the details of some easy ways to piggyback off work others do. Social networking is a primary opportunity. Firstly, stop using the “like” feature on Facebook. If you could do one easy and simple thing to up your advocacy game, it would be to stop using the like button! Instead, use the SHARE option.
Sharing a post is like upscaling your voice tenfold. Yes, it makes that much difference. Here’s why. When you share, you can comment. Adding your views makes it personal and allows you to emphasize points that are important to you. You also gain the opportunity to (tag) others. However, the most remarkable difference is the engagement level a share creates. When you share, the title of the original post or web page, its address, an excerpt from the page, and a thumbnail image appears on your newsfeed.
Your friends all know that it’s no big deal when you like something on Facebook; however, they also know that something is important to you when you share a post. Unfortunately, in the evolution of Facebook, today, almost everyone ignores likes except for the originator of a post.
That means if you are serious about anything, stop liking and start sharing.
Sharing is fantastic; however, we can take it even further. Using just a few more minutes of your time, you can also do something called cross-posting. Almost all of us belong to other community pages or groups. By sharing or copy/pasting advocacy posts to community Facebook pages/groups, you will deliver the message to literally hundreds if not thousands of people. Just make sure pages/groups you cross-post in allow the type of meme/material you’re posting.
Don’t forget to use hashtags. When you put a (#) in front of a word or phrase, you create a supermini link to your post that others can click. Social media platforms group these together so that your post now gets listed with posts of a similar nature. In addition, people looking for info on a particular subject will search hashtag phrases. Here are some examples of hashtags associated with mental and substance use health. #safesupply, #endstigma, #nomoretoxicdrugdeaths, #harmreduction, #notonemore etc.
There is one caveat. Some pages are private, and you won’t find a share button on a private page or group. Of course, there is an excellent reason for this. Groups running private pages do so to protect their members so that users can post content that is meant only for the eyes of other members — not for the public.
In these cases, look for the source of the post. For example, I often post in private groups; however, I usually post from a page that is public, meaning if you click on the link, you’ll be taken to the origin, which will be a public post. Then you can share from there.
Your very last option is to contact the poster and ask permission to share their post. Once given, ask them to private message their post to you and then copy/paste that to your page. Yes, it’s more work; however, advocating is all about effort.
There is one last but fundamental rule to follow when posting on social media. Never respond to negative comments in your advocacy posts. This is the hardest of all practices to follow. We’re all personally invested in our advocacy. When someone doesn’t see it in the same light as us, we are hurt or angry or, at the very least, tempted to try and educate. Unfortunately, all you do is fall into the trap of escalating your post into an online argument that will completely negate the original message behind your advocacy. You are not after changing the minds of those with extreme beliefs. You’re after those that sit in the silent majority. Let comments from radical perspectives speak for themselves. Most people will see them for what they are, and they’ll respect that you don’t respond to them. Besides, it takes special training and experience to answer aggressive, offensive posts in a non-confrontational way.
However, there are some avenues you can use when you have to deal with an extreme derogatory post. First, if you own or control the page, delete the post. Delete any subsequent posts. Delete any post inquiring why their post was removed, and never comment on why you removed them. If you don’t own the page and can’t ignore someone’s response, report the post to the admin for the page. Your final option is to delete your post, eliminating all comments made under it. Try again when people are calmer. Possibly try a different meme or subject.
Many voices make a tremendous difference. The reality is that all levels of government spend a great deal of time and effort tracking how many people respond to specific issues. Less mail means less attention. On the other hand, getting overwhelmed with mail from many people means they pay attention. That, folks, is the very foundation of social advocacy. If you want to make a change happen, you need to make your voice heard. All of us need to reach out and get family, friends, or for that matter, anyone we can to join our campaigns. The most effective advocacy happens when people organize, and many do the same or similar strategy together.
There are other fantastic advocacy opportunities. For example, sometimes you’ll run across someone who has taken the trouble to post a copy of a letter they have sent to health authorities or various levels of government. These are golden! You can grab these and copy or modify the content, creating your very own letter that you can now use, adding your voice to the mental and substance use health cause. Almost always, these letters come with all the names and email addresses. Talk about saving work and effort!
There are so many ways to advocate besides social media. You can educate yourself and write letters to TV/Radio stations and newspapers. You can lobby your political party to formally include policies around mental and substance use health in their platform, and the ultimate advocacy is your vote. However, I want to concentrate on setting personal goals now.
All of this is just a theoretical exercise without setting yourself some personal targets. Practical advocacy requires action. When I get serious about something, I usually write down my plan or list key objectives. I then take that list and post it someplace where I know I’ll often see it throughout my day. Be specific when you list your goals. For example, write down that you’ll never use like and always share on advocacy posts. As I mentioned before, this one strategy by itself will up your advocacy game tenfold. Set a goal to share at least one advocacy post to your newsfeed once a week. Set a goal to cross-post to a community page once a week. Set a goal to write a letter to some level of government, health authority or a newspaper etc., once a month. Strategic, written down, and measurable goals will make it happen if it’s important to you.
We’ve reached that point where I can talk about the reasons why we must advocate. The snail pace of change around mental and substance use health policies in Canada makes me want to pull out what little hair I have left on my head. There are days when I seriously question my sanity. How does that phrase go? — “when you keep doing the same things over and over again, expecting a different outcome, etc.”
Advocating for change around mental and substance use health is hard work. It’s hard trying to drive change in lumbering, stagnant, monolithic organizations like the health authorities, college of physicians, and all levels of government, including municipal, provincial and of course, my favourite, the federal people. It’s bad enough dealing with the politicians in all the political parties involved. On the other hand, we should never underestimate the bureaucrats in the various groups or government ministries. I believe that these folks often hold the real power. Some of these civil servants have been there for decades. They hold onto antiquate ideas driven by past policies like their very lives depend on it.
If that weren’t enough, on top of all this, we have the beliefs held by the general public on mental and substance use health, harm reduction, safe supply and decriminalization. Hardly any public opinions are driven by the latest scientific evidence. It’s all seems couched on something someone told them, somewhere in their past, and they still believe it today.
All of this mess is the engine that drives stigma against people with mental and substance use health challenges. That creates more trauma for those who suffer and drives us all around the hamster wheel we call MHSU again and again.
I know it can all sound incredibly depressing. However, we cannot change anything if we don’t understand the problem or the magnitude of the change we need. Everything I’ve described so far gives you the entire list of players we need to work on to make fundamental, sustainable changes in how society deals with mental and substance use health.
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Author: Ron Merk – Ron advocates for people with substance and mental illness
Families Helping Families is an initiative of the Port Alberni Community Action Team. We regularly send out “Learning Moment” articles to help folks understand substance illness. Knowledge is vital in understanding the disorder of our family members. You may copy, distribute or share our articles as long as you retain the attribution. Add yourself to our distribution list by dropping us a note at - albernihelp@gmail.com
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