Maths Jesperson
Maths was born in 1954. He was an inmate of an old mental hospital from 1980 to 1981. From 1982 to 1988 he was the producer at the theatre company called Mercuriusteatern, as well as local politician of the Green Party in Lund, Sweden. In 1984 he converted to Catholicism.
Since 1988, he has been the regional secretary of Riksførbundet för Social och Mental Hælsa (RSMH) (Swedish national organization of [ex-]users and survivors of psychiatry). He was the founding member of the European Network of (ex-) Users and Survivors of Psychiatry in 1991. From 1991 to 2000 he was the editor of the European Newsletter of (ex-) Users and Survivors of Psychiatry. Since 1999, he is writing cultural articles in a daily newspaper meanwhile doing parallel research at the University of Lund (faculty of theatre). He was the initiator, the leader and later a board member of PO-Skåne, a professional service with personal ombudsmen for people with severe psychosocial disabilities.
Since 2000, he has been an actor in the Stumpen-Ensemble, a theatre group with psychiatric survivors, drug addicts and homeless people as actors. In January 2006 he presented PO-Skåne at a seminar in the UN Headquarters in New York, as an example of supported decision-making. The seminar was connected to the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
He got married in 2004 recently living with his wife, daughter and son in Malmö, Sweden.
In 2010 he made a come back in ENUSP as a deputy of the board.