Welcome to the WAPR Website! Through this website, we hope to provide mental health practitioners, advocates, researchers and students, a portal for pushing the frontiers of knowledge on mental health in the country. We hope that this website will provide the space for the productive exchange of experiences to illuminate the theory and practice of mental health care in the Philippine context. We also wish that this website will be the gateway to best practices, pioneering studies, technologies and new networks to promote our common goal to foster mental health among Filipinos.
It is worth noting that WAPR has pioneered in the development of psychosocial concepts, interventions and strategies. Foremost of this is the extension of psychosocial care to the survivors of disaster. WAPR initiated and sustained post-disaster psychosocial programs in disaster stricken areas like Quezon, Cagayan de Oro and Iligan as well as in Samar and Northern Iloilo. These efforts led to the integration of psychosocial concepts and programs in overall disaster management. Its deliberate collaboration with local governments in community rehabilitation post disaster has led to the delivery of comprehensive community mental health care through the rural health units.
In the same groundbreaking genre are WAPR’s studies on Defining the Mental Health Research Agenda (2019) and more recently, Understanding Social Determinants of Mental Health (2022), with support from the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development.
Currently, WAPR is collaborating with the National Center for Mental Health in the development of the mental health information system. This major reform project is expected to lead toward the establishment of a digitalized mental health information system.
On the ground WAPR’s board members, singly or in cooperation with partners, are engaged in providing teleconsultations, telepsychiatry, community-based training, livelihood projects and care farming for patients who have recovered from their mental health conditions.
WAPR has kept on with its advocacy to raise public awareness on mental health. Every Tuesday, it hosts a mental health hour in a radio program Bago Ang Lahat, Mamamayan Muna! Our advocacies are carried to the higher reaches of government as WAPR represents the NGO sector in the Philippine Council for Mental Health, a vital mechanism for influencing national policies and programs in mental health.
WAPR’s ambition is to break barriers in mental health services, especially social stigma around mental illness and help-seeking behavior. The dream is mental health for all Filipinos for there can be no health without mental health!