Lived Experience Perspectives from Australia, Canada, Kenya, Cameroon and South Africa – Conceptualising the Realities

The Global Mental Health Peer Network (GMHPN) is an international lived experience organisation, constituted by a diverse group of people with lived experience of a mental health condition. The expertise by experience within the GMHPN provides valuable insights into the realities of navigating both health and societal systems to obtain services and interventions to discover a means for recovery, while at the same time respect and protect human rights. In this chapter, we as lived experience advocates from the GMHPN provides perspectives from Canada, Kenya, Australia, Cameroon and South Africa, and share the realities of what is experienced by persons with lived experience within these country contexts and share our perspectives on the domestication of the CRPD in relation to mental health, human rights and legal capacity. We further share insights into our own lived experience journeys that give substance to the conceptualisation of the debate around mental health, human rights and coercion in view of the CRPD.