Over 50 stakeholders participated in the forum which brought together a great diversity of different representatives including users, family members, politicians, local government officials and the media. But what really sets the forum apart is its commitment to 33% user involvement in all activities and working groups. MHID provided forum members with a day of training on planning and implementing coordinated public action as a prelude to the actual forum meeting.

MHID supported the forum meeting, undertook some research activities and provided consultations and facilitation to the local coordinators from Orizonturi NGO. An immediate outcome of the work was the development of the Iasi declaration which was signed by all the forum members and delivered in person by the Iasi prefecture to the Health Minister who was visiting a local hospitals in the city of Iasi at the time. Mihaela Tanasan remarked, " the national policy forum has great potential for long term change of mental health in Romania...". The forum reached a general consensus that they had to hold their government to account for the commitments it made at the January 2005 Helsinki Meeting of Ministers regarding mental health development.

Stefan Bandol, a user activist from Aripi in Bucharest stated, "...we came to the conclusion that we cannot develop policies and services effectively if we do not involve the users and ex-users..". The national forum will continue to meet this year with the next two meetings scheduled for Timasoara and Bucharest. Local coordinator Gabriela Tanasan explained that it is vital to move the location of the forum meetings around Romania to facilitate participation. Romania is a large country and travel can be time consuming and expensive. The next task is for the forum to continuing to work on developing norms and guidelines for the implementation of Romanian mental health law.

In the coming months the forum will lobby and campaign for the law to be implemented in humane and transparent ways with a central regard for the individual. MHID will continue to provide support to the forum and the facilitating NGO and will be returning to Romania later in the year. The forum will also benefit from peer-to-peer support and advice from similar initiatives in other countries.