Ole Andreas Underland
Ole Andreas Underland is the Founder and CEO of the Recovery Academy, Norway. He has more than 40 years of experience as a leader and entrepreneur in the Norwegian health care services. His expertise has been dedicated in establishing and running services within the national psychiatric health care services. His leadership has been characterized by creating resilient “care cultures" where good patient centric care has been a priority. For the past 23 years he has been a prominent activist in the development of private health care services to supplement the Norwegian public health care system. The health care provider Recoveryakademiet, founded in 2007, is the second private health care venture he has established since year 2000. In 2015, he established Hurdalsjøen Recoverysenter, Europe's first drug free psychiatric hospital, delivering on the strong urge from user and survivor organizations. Ole Andreas graduated with a Bachelor in Psychiatric Nursing in 1982 and holds an MBA from the Norwegian School of Business.
Siv Helen Rydheim
Siv Helen Rydheim, is an author, survivor and a former activist. Winner of a Freedom of Speech prize in Mental Health Care in 2013. Siv was also one of the Joint actions members who lobbied for medication-free treatment. Now she works as a special adviser at the Recovery Academy. Activism has been an obligation and a kind of a life mission to contribute to ending the horrors of coercion. Her way into activism were her experiences from coercive psychiatry and the forced medication in a hospital, done with mechanical restraint – not the historical straitjacket, but with a bed belt with wrist and ankle cuffs tied to the bed. She says: ‘I needed to be empowered, but they tried to rob my integrity’.