Drop the Disorder – And then what?!

An interactive workshop with Dr Jacqui Dillon & Jo Watson

About this event

This online workshop is aimed at people who reject the culture of psychiatric diagnosis and who want to further explore non-pathologising ways of supporting people who are experiencing emotional distress particularly when the distress has been or is at risk of being explained by society, services and many professionals as evidence of ‘mental illness.’

Jo will outline the challenge to psychiatric diagnosis and Jacqui will talk about how we can best support people without colluding with mainstream diagnostic frameworks.

There will be space for questions, discussion and the sharing of ideas making for a uniquely powerful and hopeful learning experience.

This is a limited numbers online workshop with the aim of creating a space for interaction and discussion for participants. Free and reduced places are limited and available on a first come first served basis.

About Jacqui

Jacqui Dillon is an activist, author, and speaker, and has lectured and published worldwide on trauma, abuse, hearing voices, psychosis, dissociation, and healing. She is a key figure in the international Hearing Voices Movement, has co-edited three books, published numerous articles and papers and is on the editorial board of the journal Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches. Jacqui is Honorary Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, Visiting Research Fellow at The Centre for Community Mental Health, Birmingham City University and a member of the Advisory Board, The Collaborating Centre for Values-Based Practice in Health and Social Care, St Catherine’s College, Oxford University. Jacqui’s survival of childhood abuse and subsequent experiences of using psychiatric services inform her work, and she is an outspoken advocate and campaigner for trauma informed approaches to madness and distress. Jacqui is part of a collective voice demanding a radical shift in the way we understand and respond to experiences currently defined as psychiatric illnesses. In 2017, Jacqui was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Psychology by the University of East London.

www.jacquidillon.org

Comments from participants on Jacqui’s training….

Just want to say thank you, your perspective is so extremely refreshing and mind-opening. I’ve bought the literature and can’t wait to read more. I feel enlivened by changes in my thought process and possibilities of working with a different mind-set. This is such a simple and obvious concept and so needed, it just shows how we (society) has been conditioned to think in limiting ways about mental wellbeing. Thank you.

Loved this session and the new perspective. Much needed counterpoint to the biomedical model.

​Thank you, Jacqui, totally mind blowing! Really made me think and lots of practical skills I can use in my work.

​So grateful for you giving us this time and opportunity Jacqui…. your passion and knowledge is so inspiring. I have been able to take so much away with me. I’d love the opportunity to hear more of your thinking.

About Jo

Jo Watson is a psychotherapist, trainer, supervisor, speaker and activist. Her activism is motivated by a belief that emotional distress is caused by what is experienced and largely rooted in social factors. Jo founded the Facebook group ‘Drop The Disorder!’ in September 2016. She is part of the madintheuk.com team and editor of Drop the Disorder! Challenging the culture of psychiatric diagnosis (PCCS Books, 2019) and We are the Change-Makers Poems supporting Drop the Disorder! Jo is the organiser of the AD4E events adisorder4everyone.com and can be found on Twitter @dropthedisorder

Comments from participants on Jo’s Drop the Disorder Training

This was just what our team needed to give us the confidence to challenge the damaging ways of responding to people that have sadly become so normal. We feel fired up and ready to make a difference.

I love your zero tolerance approach to pathologisng people and how strongly it’s backed up. Thank you for sharing such useful knowledge in this training Jo!

Thank you for this afternoon and for the passion you brought to it. It’s made me feel more hopeful that change is possible.

Tags

Online Events Online Classes Online Health Classes #counselling #psychiatry #psychology #mental_health

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Date and time

Thu, 5 February 2022

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/drop-the-disorder-and-then-what-an-interactive-workshop-tickets-211006134027

AND (please note that due to high demand, this workshop is being repeated)

Fri, 4 February 2022

11:00 – 14:00 GMT

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/drop-the-disorder-and-then-what-an-interactive-workshop-tickets-192237075267

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Location

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Refund policy

Contact the organiser to request a refund.

Eventbrite’s fee is nonrefundable.

OrganiserAD4E

Organiser of Drop the Disorder! – and then what?! An interactive workshop.

Jasper Gibson and Jacqui Dillon, In Conversation – Fiction about Psychosis: Impact, ethics, effects

Jasper Gibson and Jacqui Dillon, In conversation.

Fiction about Psychosis: Impact, ethics, effects

Wednesday 19 May 2021, 8pm – 9pm GMT via zoom.

An ISPS Webinar supported by Hearing the Voice, Durham University

To register your place, please go to https://fictionaboutpsychosis.eventbrite.co.uk/ .

Fiction is at the heart of human culture. Now is a perfect moment to ask what we need from it, and our storytellers. – Nathan Filer, Asylum (winter 2020) p 11.

Jasper Gibson’s The Octopus Man is a novel about a man called Tom who hears the voice of the Octopus God, Malamock. It is a novel about surviving what gets called psychosis and surviving society’s response to it. It is a novel about sisters and friends, about psychiatric incarceration and medication, about tests of faith and lines of flight.


What challenges do writers and readers of fiction face when it comes to stories about madness?


Jacqui Dillon – activist, survivor and consultant on The Octopus Man – joins Jasper Gibson to discuss how this novel came into being and to explore some of the questions it poses around ethics and imagination, literary license and personal and political responsibilities.

Jacqui Dillon  is an activist, writer and public speaker and has lectured and published worldwide on trauma, hearing voices, psychosis, dissociation and healing. Jacqui has co-edited 3 books has published numerous articles and papers and is on the editorial board of the journal Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches. In 2017, Jacqui was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Psychology by the University of East London.

Jasper Gibson was born and bred in Parwich, Ashbourne, Derbyshire. He now lives in East Sussex and is the author of one previous novel, A Bright Moon for Fools. Jasper has been writing professionally for over twenty years for magazines, TV, and online. He is the co-founder of thepoke.co.uk, and co-creator of the satirical chat show ‘Tonight… With Vladimir Putin’.

Their conversation will be introduced by Angela Woods, ISPS Trustee, Associate Professor of Medical Humanities at Durham University and Co-Director of Hearing the Voice.

Making Sense of Dissociation Raising Awareness & Promoting Healing

A rare opportunity to work with a trainer with both personal & professional experience, awareness and skills in understanding & working with dissociation.

Learning Outcomes:
• Greater awareness of the continuum of dissociative experiences.
• Enhanced confidence, responsiveness and awareness for supporting survivors of trauma, abuse and adversity.
• Awareness of effective short and long-term strategies for reducing distress and gaining control.
• Increased knowledge of working therapeutically with dissociative experiences and use of the DES-II.
• Greater understanding of the clinical relevance of dissociation.
• Acquired skills and knowledge to work collaboratively with survivors of trauma, adversity and abuse to help them reclaim ownership of their experiences and work towards recovery.

Suitable for anyone wishing to understand more about healing from trauma and working with dissociation, including mental health/social service professionals, psychotherapists and counsellors, voluntary sector workers, survivors and their friends, families and allies.

For further information and how to book a place, please visit:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/making-sense-of-dissociation-raising-awareness-promoting-healing-tickets-42463102282

Phoenix

Making Sense of Madness: An emancipatory approach

7 July 2017, 10 am – 4.30pm, registration from 9.30am

Hackney House, 25-27 Curtain Road, Hackney, London, EC2A 3LT

https://madness-london.eventbrite.co.uk

This unique, one day event, featuring Jacqui Dillon and Rai Waddingham (recently featured on BBC Horizon: Why Did I Go Mad?), explores experiences often dismissed as symptoms of serious mental illness: voices, visions, paranoia, unusual beliefs and altered states, and reframes them as understandable human responses to adversity.

Drawing from personal and professional experiences of madness, healing and recovery, combined with emerging innovative research findings, Jacqui and Rai present an emancipatory approach to understanding and working with distressing experiences that prioritises respect, personal meaning, self-determination and liberation.

Download: Making Sense of Madness Flyer

It includes:

  • Understanding ‘mad’ experiences
  • Exploring factors that can contribute to and shape distress
  • Alternatives to diagnosis – moving beyond the illness model
  • Respectful ways of helping people in distress
  • Strategies to survive and thrive

This day is suitable for:

  • Anyone interested in understanding more about madness, creativity and the complex spectrum of human experience
  • Those involved in supporting another human beinga – whether this is as a friend, ally, family member, colleague, mental health professional, teacher, therapist, social worker, voluntary sector worker, manager or spiritual advisor
  • All those with lived experience of madness and distress

Fees:

  • Unwaged: £10
  • Voluntary Sector & Self Funding: £90
  • Statutory & Commercial: £125

Please get in touch if you’re in a difficult financial position – we may be able to help.

Register:

https://madness-london.eventbrite.co.uk

Maudsley Debates – Enabling or Labelling?

This House believes that psychiatric diagnosis has advanced the care of people with mental health problems.

Wednesday 5th June, 6pm (refreshments served from 5.30pm)

To coincide with the publication of the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), sometimes described as the “Bible” of American psychiatry, the Institute of Psychiatry is hosting a debate on the issue of psychiatric diagnosis.  Some argue that a rigorously  standardised system of classification of mental disorders forms an essential role in conceptualising a patient’s problem, in predicting what treatments are likely to be effective, and in conducting valid scientific research.  Others consider psychiatric diagnoses to be no more than labels, which lack scientific and predictive validity and serve only to stigmatise and objectify those who suffer from mental disorders.  These issues will be debated in the 48th Maudsley Debate on Wednesday 5 June at 6pm at the Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Institute of Psychiatry, Denmark Hill.  The motion is “This House believes that psychiatric diagnosis has advanced the care of people with mental health problems.”  

Speaking for the motion:

Prof Norman Sartorius, former president of the World Psychiatric Association

Prof Anthony David, Professor of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry

Speaking against the motion:

Dr Felicity Callard, Senior Lecturer in Social Science for Medical Humanities, Durham University and Chair of the Board, Mental Disability Advocacy Center

Dr Pat Bracken, Clinical Director of Mental Health in West Cork and author of “Post- Psychiatry: Mental Health in a Post-Modern World”.  

Chair:  Sir Simon Wessely, Professor of Psychological Medicine and Vice Dean for Academic Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry

 Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Institute of Psychiatry Main Building, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF

Contact: Hannah Baker

For further information please see: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/iop/news/debates/index.aspx 

Bad Things That Happen to You Can Drive You Crazy!

I’m feeling elated after an amazing evening at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. The event, sponsored by Mount Holyoke College Department of Psychology and Education, the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community, and the Freedom Center was attended by about 150 people  – students, academics and people from the local community – some as far away as Boston, Connecticut and Pittsburg. The auditorium was packed with people hungry for an alternative to the pharmaceutically driven, biomedical model which dominates so heavily in America.  Many were inspired when they heard Ron Coleman and Paul Baker speak late last year and there is a growing momentum for the development of the Hearing Voices Network in America. Change is happening.

My talk, entitled: “Bad Things That Happen to You Can Drive You Crazy! Understanding Abuse, Trauma, and Madness and Working toward Recovery”,

(see this link for further information: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/stories/5682743)

seemed to really resonate with others experiences and many people were clearly questioning the adequacy of a biomedical model to make sense of and respond to human distress.

I began by reading ‘A Tale of An Ordinary Little Girl’ and then spoke about the groundbreaking work of the Hearing Voices Movement, its success in many other parts of the world and our intention to revolutionise the way societies think about hearing voices and other unusual human experiences. I ended by stressing the imperative to take collective responsibility for the ills in our societies, to become aware of the dominant ideologies that redefine reality and to challenge oppression, power, social norms and inequalities. I appealed to everyone to join the last great civil rights movement – fighting for the rights of those labelled as mentally ill.

As always, a number of survivors came up to me afterwards and thanked me for telling ‘their’ story. Lots of people wanted to find out more about how they could get involved in the movement, meet with others, start groups. People are impatient for a paradigm shift in the way we understand and respond to human suffering which is now, long overdue. Many are in anguish. Fortunately, there are already some fantastic Hearing Voices Groups running in the area, with several new groups in development. I left feeling proud, inspired and grateful to be part of such a wonderful, powerful movement for change in the world.

There is still so much work to be done. First, it’s time for a bath and then bed.