The video of the Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry conference More Harm than Good: Confronting the Psychiatric Medication Epidemic is now available YouTube.

http://cepuk.org/2015/09/07/harm-good-conference-can-watched-live/

Speakers and panellists include:

Robert Whitaker

Robert Whitaker is an award-winning science journalist & author, a former fellow of the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University in Boston and founder of the influential e-zine madinamerica.com. He is is the author of five books: Mad in America, The Mapmaker’s Wife, On the Laps of Gods, Anatomy of an Epidemic and most recently Psychiatry Under the Influence (with Lisa Cosgrove). His newspaper and magazine articles on the mentally ill and the pharmaceutical industry have garnered several national awards, including a George Polk Award for medical writing and a National Association of Science Writers Award for best magazine article. A series he co-wrote for the Boston Globe on the abuse of mental patients in research settings was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

Prof Peter Gøtzsche

Peter C. Gøtzsche is a professor in clinical research design & analysis, and a specialist in internal medicine.  He graduated as a master of science in biology and chemistry in 1974 and as a physician 1984. He worked with clinical trials and regulatory affairs in the drug industry 1975-1983, and at hospitals in Copenhagen 1984-95. He co-founded The Cochrane Collaboration in 1993 and established The Nordic Cochrane Centre the same year. He became professor of Clinical Research Design and Analysis in 2010 at the University of Copenhagen. Peter has published more than 70 papers in “the big five” (BMJ, Lancet, JAMA, Ann Intern Med and N Engl J Med) and his scientific works have been cited over 15,000 times. He is the author of four books, most recently Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial (to be published Sep 2015).

Dr Peter Breggin

Peter R. Breggin, MD, has been called “The Conscience of Psychiatry” for his many decades of successful efforts to reform the mental health field. His scientific and educational work has provided the foundation for modern criticism of psychiatric drugs and ECT, and leads the way in promoting more caring and effective therapies. He has authored dozens of scientific articles and more than twenty books including the bestsellerTalking Back to Prozac (1994, with Ginger Breggin), Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime (2008), and Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and Their Families (2013). Dr. Breggin acts as a medical expert in criminal, malpractice and product liability suits, often involving adverse drug effects such as suicide, violence, brain injury, death, and tardive dyskinesia. Dr. Breggin is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former full-time consultant at NIMH. His private practice is in Ithaca, New York where he treats adults, couples, and families with children.

Prof John Abraham

John Abraham is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social Science, Health & Medicine at King’s College, London. Initially trained as a mathematician, he worked with the Radical Statistics arm of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science and then earned three postgraduate degrees: MSc in Science Policy Studies, MA in Sociology and DPhil in Politics. He has published widely in sociology and politics, including four books on sociology of education (e.g. Divide and School: Gender and Class Dynamics in Comprehensive Education) and the politics of food (e.g. Food and Development: The Political Economy of Hunger and the Modern Diet). However, most recently his research has focused entirely on the sociology and politics of pharmaceuticals innovation, safety, efficacy, regulation and cost-effectiveness, especially in the UK, EU and US from the late nineteenth century to the present day.

Dr Joanna Moncrieff

Joanna Moncrieff is a Senior Lecturer in psychiatry at University College London and a practising consultant psychiatrist. She has written articles critical of various psychiatric drug treatments, including lithium, antidepressants and neuroleptics. Joanna has also written about the adverse influence of the pharmaceutical industry on psychiatry. She is also one of the founders and the co-chair of the Critical Psychiatry Network.  Joanna’s research consists of an analysis of all aspects of psychiatric drug treatment. She is interested in the nature and function of diagnosis in modern psychiatric practice, and in the history, politics and philosophy of psychiatry more generally. She has also written three books: The Bitterest Pills, published by Palgrave Macmillan, The Myth of the Chemical Cure, published by Palgrave Macmillan, and A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs, published by PCCs books.

Prof Peter Kinderman

Peter Kinderman is  Professor of Clinical Psychology and Head of the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society at the University of Liverpool, with over 200 academic staff (32 of them professors) comprising psychiatrists, general practitioners, clinical and other applied psychologists, sociologists, public health physicians, nurses, sociologists and academics. Peter Kinderman’s research activity and clinical work has involved studying serious and enduring mental health problems such as paranoid beliefs and hallucinations, psychological models of mental health and the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions, alternatives to traditional psychiatric and diagnostic approaches and how psychological science can assist public policy in health and social care.  Peter Kinderman has an honorary position as Consultant Clinical Psychologist with Mersey Care NHS Trust. He is currently a member of the UK Office for National Statistics’ Technical Advisory Group for the Measuring National Well-being Programme, and served twice as Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology.  Peter is also President elect of the British Psychological Society.

Dr James Davies

James Davies is a co-founder of CEP. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 2006 with a PhD in social and medical anthropology. He is a senior lecturer in social anthropology and psychotherapy at the University of Roehampton and is a practicing psychotherapist, having worked for MIND and the NHS.

James has written widely in academe and has delivered lectures at many universities including Harvard, Oxford, Brown, UCL, Columbia (New York), and The New School (New York). James has also written for The Times, The New Scientist, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, Harvard Divinity Bulletin and Salon. He is author of three books including Cracked: why psychiatry is doing more harm than good (2013).

The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Irish Institute of Mental Health Nursing (IIMHN) took place on Monday 7 September 2015 at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin, 24 D’Olier Street, Dublin 2.

A new executive was formed, with some new faces to replace members not eligible under the constitution to continue in officer positions.  We are delighted to inform you that Dr Mary Farrelly from DCU is the new chairperson. We want to congratulate Mary and wish her all the very best. We would also like to welcome the new officers elected to the committee.

School of Applied Social Studies and School Of Nursing and Midwifery

University College Cork, Ireland in Association with Critical Voices Network Ireland

11th and 12th November 2015

‘Talking’ therapies have become increasingly central in dealing with all aspects of human life. This trend is now generally referred to as the ‘therapy industry’ (Moloney, 2013). This conference, now in its 7^th year, aims to explore and debate critical perspectives on:

• The value of talking therapies
• The politics of the therapy industry
• Talking therapies as another expert system
• Other ways (beyond therapies) to support people in distress

Confirmed Keynote Speakers   
Wilma Boevink is an experiential expert, who works as a social scientist at the Trimbos-Institute, the Netherlands. She is a former Professor of Recovery and founder of Tree (towards Recovery, Empowerment and Experiential Expertise). Currently finishing her thesis on recovery, empowerment and experiential expertise.

Lucy Johnstone is a consultant clinical psychologist, author of ‘Users and abusers of psychiatry’, co-editor of ‘Formulation in psychology and psychotherapy: making sense of people’s problems’ and ‘A straight-talking guide to psychiatric diagnosis’, along with a number of other critical texts on mental health theory and practice. She is currently based in a mental health service in South Wales.

Jacqui Dillon is a respected speaker, writer and activist, who has lectured and published worldwide on trauma, psychosis, dissociation and recovery. Jacqui is the national Chair of the Hearing Voices Network in England, Honorary Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Health, Durham University and Visiting Research Fellow at The Centre for Community Mental Health, Birmingham City University.

Malcolm Garland is a consultant psychiatrist in Dublin.  His team tries to incorporate novel and alternative approaches, including a minimal medication approach and an ethos fostering individuation, not dependence. He is concerned with the slow uptake of a non-“bio” approach by psychiatry, but understands the pressure teams are under to keep people “safe” and the conflicts this creates. He thinks psychiatrists may soon be on the “endangered species” list…

Rory Doody is a Recovery Development Advocate. He is a voice hearer and engages with his own mental health as often as he breathes! Plagued by inner questions like “who does this serve?” he enquires in the different areas of his work, involving education, case work, service and policy developments, structural change, and good intentions. As a ‘poacher turned game keeper’ with 20+ years of service user history, this question also serves as a check against his own personal motives.

Dina (Konstantina) Poursanidou is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, based at the Service User Research Enterprise; Dina has used mental health services since 2008; Member of Asylum, the magazine for democratic psychiatry; integrates an interest in the socio-cultural determinants of distress and socio-political action on the one hand, with an interest in the human subject at a more intimate and individual level on the other.

Call for Oral Presentations/Workshops (45 minutes’ duration): Please submit an abstract (in Word – 250 words max) related to the conference theme and outlining its aims and intentions by 7 September 2015. Please also submit a brief bio (in Word – 150 words max). Email abstract and bio to l.sapouna@ucc.ie. Inquiries to h.gijbels@ucc.ie or l.sapouna@ucc.ie.

Registration details will be circulated in early September 2015.

The Conference organisers are Harry Gijbels, Catherine McAuley School of Nursing and Midwifery, and Lydia Sapouna, School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, Ireland.   

The IIMHN, in conjunction with the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin is pleased to announced ‘A Public Lecture’ to be given by Professor Gail A. Hornstein, Professor of Psychology at Mount Holyoke College (Massachusetts, USA). The event will take place on Thursday, June 25 2015, 3.30-4.30pm.

Professor Hornstein’s research on the contemporary history and practices of psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis has been supported by visiting fellowships to Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, London, Durham, and Nottingham, and her articles and opinion pieces have appeared in many scholarly and popular publications. Her book, ‘Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness’, shows how the insights of people diagnosed with ‘psychosis’ can challenge fundamental assumptions about madness, treatment, and mental life. Gail’s Bibliography of ‘First-Person Narratives of Madness in English’, now in its 5th edition with more than 1,000 titles, is used internationally by educators, clinicians, and peer organizations. She has worked closely with psychiatric survivor groups for the past decade, organised and co-facilitated one of the USA’s first hearing voices peer-support groups, and speaks widely about mental health issues across the US, UK, and Europe. She and Jacqui Dillon (Chair of HVN in England) have just received a major grant from the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care to expand hearing voices groups across the USA and to research the mechanisms by which such groups work.

This talk seeks to open up discussions of mental health and break out of narrow, pathologising categories. The reframing of more and more actions, feelings, and perceptions as brain-based disorders is eroding our capacity to understand ourselves and to assess and cope with life’s challenges. Key studies by the World Health Organization demonstrate far better mental health in ‘developing countries’ than in those considered more ‘developed’, even as Western psychiatry’s biological model is increasingly exported to the rest of the world. By highlighting the importance of lived experience and our own ways of making sense of ourselves, we can develop alternative models that are empowering and useful in our everyday lives and do justice to the resilience and adaptability that are key aspects of human psychology.

To reserve a place at this event please contact Jeni Ryan @ ryanjen@tcd.ie

The 9th April 2015 marked the launch of the Critical Mental Health Nurses Network in Durham, UK. The network marked its launch with a web presence, a new website http://www.criticalmhnursing.org/.

The network has aspirations to become a major resource for mental health nursing internationally and to act as a source of inspiration and solidarity for critical mental health nurses everywhere. The IIMHN supports them in their attempts to raise profile of ‘critical voices’ in approaches to mental health care. They hope you will subscribe to their blog, bookmark the hashtag #critMHN, and familiarise yourself with the discussions. They offer and interesting standpoint

“…being ‘critical’ is best thought of as more of process, a commitment to questions. It is a decision to prefer dialogue than to settle for a monologue. It follows that if every contribution agreed with the last, and if every reader liked everything written, then this could not really be said to be a critical network. Dissent is most definitely allowed.  We thought long and hard about the word critical. A bit negative, some said.

In Transactional Analysis there are two types of parent: critical and nurturing. Wouldn’t we rather ‘nurture’ better nursing into existence, rather than pick holes in what we have? Well, maybe we would. We had some great conversations at the Durham conference, lots of enthusiasm and lots of positive ideas, and agreement too. However, a few people gave us the feedback that they came into nursing to be caring and don’t want to feel ‘got at’. We feel this feedback is very welcome, and expresses a legitimate fear. It is bad enough trying to persuade our managers (or, indeed, the newspapers) that not everything that happens is someone’s fault, without turning on each other! However, whatever the intentions of individual nurses, there exist many reasons to be critical. We are not proud of everything that happens under the name of mental health nursing, and there may be a need to explore those difficult issues head on, to hear from those who feel that being a nurse, and being nursed, has not been what it should have been. If we choose only to ‘focus on positive change’ we may be sweeping those experiences under the carpet. Those experiences and the confusing moments where concepts collide can teach us a lot, difficult though it may be. And nursing itself is only part of our focus: we want to consider the expectations placed on nurses in a critical way, too. Those who are attracted to this network because of their critical thoughts about psychiatry may find like-minded people here. But we are not the Critical Psychiatry Network – that already exists.”