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Beyond the Therapy Room

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

Keynote Talk on Demedicalising Distress in Powys, September 2013

Watch my recent talk on Demedicalising Distress in Powys on YouTube.

http://youtu.be/JHzHliy5yeQ

The Powys Mental Health team invites you to a free conference they are organising in in Llandrindod Wells.

Shaping Services Together.

  • Should the question underpinning how we shape our mental health services be “what has happened to you” rather than “what is wrong with you”?  Main Speaker Jacqui Dillon.
  • Do you use or have you ever used mental health services or are you close  to someone who has?  Do you think that your experiences of mental  health services could help change how services are planned and  delivered?
  • Do you want to know how you, no matter what your age, might become more involved in shaping our mental health services nationally and locally?
  • Key decision makers coming. Do you have something to say about the welfare benefit system and the changes?

Everyone welcome, all you need is you to be interested in the questions above. We can provide free transport to you if you live in Powys.

Lunch and refreshments will be available.

Thursday, 19th September 2013, 10:15 a.m – 4:00 p.m. The Pavilion, Spa Road, Llandrindod Wells, Powys LD1 5EY

To Book or find out more call Glynis Luke on 01597 822 191 or email her at pamhinfo@pavo.org.uk or book online here This is your opportunity to debate and communicate directly with national and local decision makers about mental health services.

Our keynote speaker is Jacqui Dillon, writer, campaigner, international speaker and trainer.

English poster here and leaflet here.  Welsh poster here and leaflet here

This is one of three conferences across Wales funded and supported by Welsh Government and Public HealtH Wales.  The other two are:

  • Thurs 12th September in Rhyl called Measuring Up.  More here.
  • Wed 23rd October in Cardiff called Know Your Rights.  More here.

These events are part of the Stronger in Partnership initiative, you can find out more about Powys Stronger in Partnership here.

You can download some information about the event here and there is more on our blog here.

Booking for the event is now open – click here.

 

Just Saying It As It Is: Names matter; Language Matters; Truth Matters

Clinical language has colonised experiences of mental distress and alienation. Consequently, many accounts of healing and recovery seem to be about a decolonising process, a reclaiming of experience (Dillon and May, 2002). These counter narratives, which offer diverse representations of survival in adversity (hooks, 1993), follow in a long tradition of protest literature (Hornstein, 2002). From slavery abolitionists and suffragettes, to feminists and black and gay civil rights activists, who have repudiated dominant, oppressive ideologies via the language of discrimination, to challenge injustice. Many of us within mental health activism have argued that it is crucial to decolonise the medicalised language of human experience in order to contest the dominant paradigm of the biomedical model of madness and distress. After all, fighting for the rights of those labelled mentally ill, is the last great civil rights movement (Dillon et al, 2013).

Just Saying It As It Is: Names matter; Language Matters; Truth Matters

 

 

Clinical language has colonised experiences of mental distress and alienation. Consequently, many accounts of healing and recovery seem to be about a decolonising process, a reclaiming of experience (Dillon and May, 2002). These counter narratives, which offer diverse representations of survival in adversity (hooks, 1993), follow in a long tradition of protest literature (Hornstein, 2002). From slavery abolitionists and suffragettes, to feminists and black and gay civil rights activists, who have repudiated dominant, oppressive ideologies via the language of discrimination, to challenge injustice. Many of us within mental health activism have argued that it is crucial to decolonise the medicalised language of human experience in order to contest the dominant paradigm of the biomedical model of madness and distress. After all, fighting for the rights of those labelled mentally ill, is the last great civil rights movement (Dillon et al, 2013).

 

The Work of Experience Based Experts

Judi Chamberlin died in January, 2010 (Hevesi 2010). This chapter consists of a shortened version of Judi’s chapter in the first edition of Models of Madness, followed by a summary on the effectiveness of user led services and an account of the Hearing Voices Movement by Jacqui Dillon, Peter Bullimore and Debra Lampshire

DSM-5 Protest Tuesday 4th June 4.30pm onwards at the Institute of Psychiatry

Speak Out Against Psychiatry (SOAP) are a group of former patients, carers, mental health professionals and concerned citizens who are campaigning for humane treatment for people experiencing mental distress. SOAP are opposed to forced treatment, electro-shock therapy and the psychiatric drugging of children. SOAP also promote humane alternative ways of helping people in distress.

SOAP are organizing a demonstration to coincide with a forthcoming Institute of Psychiatry conference on the DSM-5 (the latest of edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” a book published by the American Psychiatric Association which is widely used throughout the world to classify mental disorders).

The protest will be on Tuesday 4th June from 4.30pm till early evening at the Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London, SE5 8AF.

SOAP are organizing the protest as they feel that the DSM-5 makes it easier for normal human experiences to be labeled as mental illness. For example people experiencing grief can be more easily given the label “Major Depressive Disorder”, and children with temper tantrums can now be diagnosed as having “Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder”. 

A spokesperson for SOAP says “The DSM encourages a tick-box approach to understanding human distress which serves the interests of professionals and drug companies rather than the people who really need help. With the DSM-5 things have been taken a step further: even mainstream organizations such as the National Institute for Mental Health and the British Psychological Society are distancing themselves from the DSM-5, claiming it is unscientific. ”

SOAP feels the DSM-5 will increase the number of people stigmatized by a mental health diagnosis, increase prescriptions of mind-altering drugs, and further what they see as a worrying trend of everyday human problems being put in the hands of highly paid experts and pharmaceutical companies rather than our families and communities.

SOAP also objects to the DSM approach in general, where new disorders are created by committees without any objective biological evidence. SOAP highlights the fact that in earlier versions of the DSM, homosexuality was classed as a disorder but this has since been removed as it is no longer socially acceptable.   SOAP feel that, while mental disorders are frequently being changed by the professionals, patients are still forced to accept them.

A SOAP advocate says, “In the UK mental health system, if a patient rejects the psychiatric label, they are described as ‘lacking insight into their condition’ and the Mental Health Act is used to force them to take medication. How can a person be expected to agree to a label when they are changing every time the latest guide book comes out?”

The protest will give people the chance to voice their concerns about the DSM-5, and allow survivors of the psychiatric system to speak out about their experiences of labelling and forced treatment. SOAP will also be holding a memorial service for a former member who tragically took her own life following decades of forced medical treatment.

SOAP invites anybody who is concerned about the DSM-5, or other aspects of the mental health system, to come along on Tuesday 4th June – from 4.30pm till the early evening, at the Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park,London, SE5 8AF.

PDF press release available here: SOAP-DSM-5PressRelease

New Foreign Correspondent for Mad in America

I am thrilled to have been invited to become a foreign correspondent for the Mad in America web site – see: http://www.madinamerica.com/

I will be writing about the important and innovative work of the Hearing Voices Movement alongside many eminent colleagues, critical thinkers and activists working together to bring about an essential revolution in the world of mental health.

You can read my first post here: http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/01/the-hearing-voices-movement-beyond-critiquing-the-status-quo/

About Mad in America:

The site is designed to serve as a resource and a community for those interested in rethinking psychiatric care in the United States and abroad. We want to provide readers with news, stories of recovery, access to source documents, and the informed writings of bloggers that will further this enterprise.

The bloggers on this site include people with lived experience, peer specialists, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, program managers, social activists, attorneys, and journalists. While their opinions naturally vary, they share a belief that our current system of psychiatric care needs to be vastly improved, and, many would argue, transformed.

We also want to provide readers with the opportunity to add their voices to this discussion. We encourage readers to leave comments (see comment policy below), and to submit recovery stories and op-ed submissions. We encourage our readers to visit our forums to further this communal discussion.

Finally, we are commissioning original journalism, both in video and print, that explore on-going efforts to remake care in the U.S. and abroad, and also investigate the problems and deficiencies with the current drug-based paradigm of care.

We welcome feedback and comments on how we can improve this website, and continue to build an online community that can be a societal force for change.

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