Living Association Thailand (LAT):
Living Association is a Thailand based organization of persons with psychosocial disabilities and their care givers and supporters. It offers support in recovery, skill development, promotion of opportunity to work and inclusion of persons with psychosocial disabilities in the community. The organization values the importance of wellbeing and being alive as prerequisites for happiness and a better quality of life. It’s flagship program, the Living Recovery centre, is a modified clubhouse with peer-run services focusing on holistic wellness, which includes the physical, social, emotional intellectual, financial, environmental, occupational and spiritual wellness.
LAT’s advocacy around a discriminatory government regulation
In Thailand, the Civil Servant recruitment regulation specifies that people with psychosis and mood disorders with severe or chronic symptoms, that cause barriers to performing the duty, cannot be admitted into the government workforce. This is a highly disability based discriminatory practice blocking employment opportunities of persons with psychosocial disabilities and is in direct contradiction to the Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which was ratified by Thailand in 2008.
Living Association started an advocacy campaign and advocated with the government for equal opportunity for employment in the government sector. LAT campaigned for repealing the civil official authority regulation that prohibits persons with psychosis and mood disorders (with severe and chronic symptoms) to be accepted to enter the government workforce. LAT and their network held three important platforms to discuss the issue and all participants, except the civil official authority, agreed that the regulation is discriminatory and ineffective in screening for good officials. They also made a petition to the House of Representative committee on the issue and plan to engage with the administrative court, if the authorities persist and sign the regulation.
The following are posters shown by the network of people with psychosocial disability when LAT made the petition to the House of the representatives about equal employment opportunity in the government sector. LAT translated them into English for TCI’s #WhatWENeed 2022 campaign.
Petition to Director General of Department of Mental Health
At the Committee on children, youth, women, the elderly, persons with disability, ethnic groups and diversity of sexual orientation, The house of the representatives
Petition at the Prime Minister’s Office
