Mental Health Awareness Week was this week launched by Health Minister Walter Roban at the Mid-Atlantic Wellness Institute (MWI).

The theme this year is the link between chronic illness and mental health.

Alan Rowland is the guest speaker for this year's Mental Health Awareness Week.

He works with West Midlands Strategic Health Authority in the UK, teaching community health trainers to deal with low level mental health problems a similar arrangement to the reforms planned for MWI.

Mr. Rowland worked in visual communications and publishing until he had a breakdown in 1999. He said at a Tuesday ceremony opening the week's events: "I looked back to the people that I left behind. I thought, there has to be a better way."

He said he had come across prejudice "from professionals, from nurses, from doctors and from management".

"It's something that's very striking when you feel it, because the very people who should care for you, genuinely don't care.

"It's because they're ignorant and don't fully understand the possibilities of recovery."

Mr. Rowland said his current work was about giving people the opportunity of not having to go to hospital.

"It means that their social network and their family is still intact. Whereas when you take someone out of a family setting, it can be a difficult adjustment for everyone when they go back," he added.

MWI chief operating officer Patrice Dill said plans aimed at the ongoing reform of mental health services in Bermuda include:

• specialist clinics for autism spectrum disorders which have provided treatment to 27 children;

• the allocation of funds for a four-unit, 16-bed residential care facility in Somerset to help move "appropriate clients" from the hospital setting;

• a town-hall meeting on November 4 at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute.

"We need the community to engage with us in the development of community-based services that form the heart of the recovery model," Ms Dill said.

"This is the first town hall after the [mental health] plan was formally launched. We will be coming to the East and West of the Island in the New Year."

Events planned as part of Mental Health Awareness week include:

• a physicians' lunch at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital at 12:30 today;

• family support groups, presented by Mr. Rowland, in the MWI main conference room at 6 p.m. today;

• a learning lunch at MWI tomorrow at 1 p.m.;

• learning activities and games at MWI on Friday from 9.30 a.m.

• story telling and activities at Bermuda Youth Library for children aged four to seven on Saturday between 10.30 a.m. and 11.30 a.m.