Users of a mental health charity are preparing to put their best foot forward to raise much-needed funds.
A group of walkers will trek four miles across Inverness on September 23 in support of the Joshi Project.
The charity is named after the charity founders’ daughter, who died aged 24, in 2020.
Joshi Smith’s parents Mark and Catherine have been campaigning for the past two years to establish a type of person-centred psychiatry, called Trieste, in Scotland.
Trieste, a city in north-eastern Italy, has been a beacon of holistic, person-centred psychiatry reform since the 1970s, and has been designated by the World Health Organisation as a “centre of excellence for mental health recovery”.
Completing their Kiltwalk in Inverness
The group of service users in Inverness will aim to complete three loops of Bught Park before walking into Inverness city centre.
The sponsored walk will support the fundraising efforts of the Joshi Project charity Kiltwalk in Edinburgh.
Inverness resident and board member Joanna Kerr organised the event so service users in the Highlands can lend their support to the cause.
She said: “As mental health service users in the Highlands, it’s difficult for us all to get to Edinburgh, especially on Sunday morning so we decided raise funds and show our support by walking in Inverness instead.
“Unfortunately, The Hunter Foundation has decided not to include Inverness among its Scottish walking cities, so we’re simply organising our own.”
Creating a new Joshi Hub in Inverness
The Joshi Project, in conjunction with Highland advocacy group HUG Action for Mental Health, is currently in negotiations with NHS Highland to open Scotland’s first Trieste Model-based 24/7 mental-wellbeing Joshi Hub in Inverness.
Ms Kerr says a centre of this type is desperately needed in the Highlands to support those battling with mental health problems.
She added: “As service users, we know better than anyone why the current mental health system of care and treatment needs to change and exactly what should be done about it.
“That why we support The Joshi Project and its plans to open a new, Trieste-style hub in Inverness that offers real, individualized recovery options with genuine compassion and dignity.
“We desperately need a Joshi Hub in Inverness.”
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