Episode 15: The Power of Sharing Stories to Shine Hope, with Matthew Jackman

This week’s special guest on the Hope Matrix is Matthew Jackman. Matthew lives with Bipolar Affective Disorder and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (defined by DSM/Psychiatry), is a sibling caregiver to his younger brother and sister who live with enduring psychosocial diverse abilities, and has lost his mother to suicide, and consequently his grandparents due to stigma. His experiences of distress and service use drive his passion for global social change in mental health. He is a global mental health advocate promoting human rights, social justice and lived experience as an academic science from public health and MAD STUDIES disciplines. You can learn more about Matthew below. 

In Episode 16 of the Hope Matrix, Kathryn and Matt discuss their journey from hopelessness towards cultivating communities of hope, support, and compassion. They examine the different ways of understanding suffering and vulnerability as sites of knowledge production on the self. Matthew describes the MAD Movement, which challenges the epistemological primacy of biomedicine in representing and informing global mental health. 

Through the Australian Centre for Lived Experience (TACFLE), Matthew aims to expand the literacy around mental health to include and prioritize lived experience as a vital source of knowledge. Overall, Kathryn and Matthew remark on the hope found by holding space for others and by participating in a community motivated towards change and support.

More about Matthew
Matthew qualified in Social Work undertaking counseling, case management, group therapy, community development, social research, social policy, and personal/systems-level advocacy across diverse intersectionalities. Matthew's advocacy and research reflect alternatives to biological approaches to wellbeing. He mobilizes MAD STUDIES as the scientific foundation for peer/lived experience work in mental health. Matthew represented the Western Pacific Region on the Global Mental Health Peer Network and was a Global Shaper with the World Economic Forum. He has represented lived experience perspectives on the National Advisory Panel (mental health) for the Australian Association of Social Workers. Matthew is a Global Lived Experience Ambassador for Generation Mental Health. He consults the World Health Organisation in mental health. Matthew is trained internationally in certified peer specialist practice and is a visiting scholar in Psychiatry at Yale PRCH.

Matthew’s vision is to utilize personal power and privilege and mobilize vulnerabilities as strength and resilience, to make space for those with less power. Through giving voice to those silenced in achieving an equitable world justice is strived toward. Matthew instructs Mad Studies co-designing/producing a lived experience-focused critical mental health unit in Social Work. Matthew is proudly Mad, Neurodiverse, and Queer, utilizing his intersectional experiences of oppression and privilege in systemic advocacy.

You can learn more about Matthew by visiting: 
https://hopefulminds.org/matthew-jackman/
https://globalhealth.harvard.edu/lived-experience-profile-matthew-jackman/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-jackman-he-him-57b28951/

More About The Australian Centre for Lived Experience (TACFLE)
TACFLE is an institute for lived experience leadership in global mental health. The Center was founded to challenge the industrial complex around the biomedicalization of human suffering and establish a discipline of lived knowledge for global mental health care.
Website: www.tacfle.com