Section 3: ACT intervention to reduce stigma of mental illness
General Instructions for Facilitators
- While adhering to the protocol, the facilitators at the same time need to uphold and model ACT principles when delivering to the group:
- Being compassionate
- Model acceptance and willingness
- Being open to participants’ experience
- Apply techniques in a flexible manner
- In leading typical ACT experiential exercises:
- give a preamble and context to orient participants
- lead the exercise while closely observing participants’ reactions and level of participation
- facilitate reflection:
- draw from participants their actual experience and sharing
- there are no “wrong” experiences – even when a participant draws an opposite conclusion to what the intent of the exercise is; in this case, depending on the situation, find out more about the experience or thank the participant for sharing; sometimes gentle questions may help participants gain additional perspectives including the intent of the exercise; inviting others’ experience will often help
- bring out important points of each exercise – highlighting participants’ shared experiences
- try to connect the experience with previous exercises, concepts, or participants’ shared stories where relevant
- Summarize discussion.
- After each exercise, give out a corresponding ACT Exercise Card – templates can be found in Appendix 4 after all the activities templates. Invite one of the participants to read the back of the card out loud. Give out the 6 core ACT process cards after the review in Session 3.
