ISRAFAM started in 2016 with 20 families, today about 5,000 families and volunteers providing community, advocacy and assistance for some 300,000 families (3% of the population) in need of our holistic approach to activism. This past year, ISRAFAM’s volunteer support line has succeeded in responding quickly to solve mostly bureaucratic obstacles hindering families’ emergency action. There is no substitute for expertise from accumulated experience.
Our bi-weekly online community meetings with expert lecturers have grown from 80 to 400 family members attending.
This year, we fulfilled our goal of placing representatives in all 10 Israeli psychiatric hospitals with some appointed as Board members, bringing the gamut of the family to the forefront, supporting individual families.
The organization’s extensive advocacy activities vis-à-vis ministries, HMOs, and the Coalition of Mental Health Organizations, further promoted our ongoing struggle to transfer the public center of gravity from hospitals to community. We fought especially rigorously this year to establish mental health intervention crisis teams, participating in parliamentary debates on this Bill.
With a unique knowledge base on the economics of mental health, ISRAFAM operates action groups on specific issues such as rehabilitation, representation in hospitals, individual support, children and youth, treatment avoidance, disorder denial and more.
Our annual December conference, now hybrid, "Status and Rights of the Family in Mental Health", hosted hundreds of families. December 21 will be the follow-up conference, presenting EUFAMI and our new membership and involvement.
