NGO Hingerahu was originally founded in Pärnu in 1995 to promote everything associated with mental health and to protect the interests of people with mental disorders in society, from offering internal support to membership to organizing informative events for all fellow citizens. We have arranged seminars on the topic of mental health and have tried educating fellow-men in the form of psychohygiene. For people with special needs, we have organized joint events from quizzes and outings to theatre, sports and karaoke festivals all over Estonia.
Our primary target groupt consists of people who have fallen into the social at-risk group: from former prisoners and long term unemployed to handicapped people. We do not define a human being with pathology or diagnostics, but instead, behind the difficulties of living, we try to see the human being as a biopsychosocial whole and we also do not forget spiritual, existential and the meaning and meaningfulness of life related values.
Based on the salutogenetic paradigm, we turn our emphasis rather on the positive resources of a person and not in the finding of faults. The line between normality and abnormality is very vague and mental health is already by nature a very controversial concept. We also mediate and create art and self-expression from paintings to metal and woodworks for persons who have found themselves stuck between the various gears of life.
The aim is to develop social enterprise so that those people, who are incapable of enduring full time workdays and finding jobs on the open job market by themselves due to health reasons, could also find work. We are located in Pärnu, in rooms provided to us by the City Government of Pärnu, our address is Rüütli street 23 and we are trying to gradually evolve into a mental health information center, a so called buffer institution, that would mediate and promote healthy lifestyles, be engaged in a more operative counselling, organizing seminars and would be in an active co-operation with different institutions.
Mental health issues do not ask what your education level is nor how fat your wallet is.