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.”

The launch of a new national Hearing Voices Network, Hearing Voices Network Ireland (HVNI), will happen on Friday 17^th April 2015, 1.30 pm-4.30pm, at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin, 24 D’Olier Street, Dublin 2.  The Network launch will be led by Jacqui Dillon, Chair of the Hearing Voices Network, England and founder of the Hearing Voices Movement worldwide, Professor Marius Romme from the Netherlands, on whose research the approach was founded.

With the launch of Hearing Voices Network Ireland, the Network joins over 30 nationally based networks around the world joined by shared goals and values, incorporating a fundamental belief that there are many ways to understand the experience of hearing voices and other unusual or extreme experiences.  It is part of an international collaboration between people with lived experience, their families and professionals, to develop an alternative approach to coping with emotional distress that is empowering and useful to people, and does not start from the assumption that people who experience voice hearing have an illness.

Over the past 3 years, the Irish Institute of Mental Health Nursing embarked upon a programme of training delivered by Jacqui Dillon in the development and facilitation of Hearing Voices groups. This training was delivered nationwide with the support of the mental health nursing programmes in TCD, UCC, DCU, NUIG, St Angela’s, Sligo and UCD and the Nursing & Midwifery Planning & Development Units.

Over 250 people; professionals, voice hearers and family members attended the facilitator training and to date over 15 groups have been established across the length and breadth of the country, with more groups in the process of development.

The event will also feature the official launch of the Hearing Voices Network Ireland logo created by Michelle Dalton, Irish Voice Hearer and artist, and the Hearing Voices Network Ireland website. ‘High Hopes’, Ireland’s first homeless choir will provide the entertainment on the day.

There is an open invitation to the launch, you can register for the event by sending an email to: launch@hearingvoicesnetworkireland.ie before 10^th April 2015

The IIMHN is pleased to announce the following dates for training in Hearing Voices Group facilitation in 2015.  Training will be delivered by Jacqui Dillon, CEO Hearing Voices Network UK.

3rd June 2015

One-day Hearing Voices awareness workshop in the Rainbow Clubhouse, Cherry Orchard Campus

1st, 2nd and 3rd July 2015

A three-day Hearing Voices group facilitation workshop in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University College Dublin

6th July 2015

One-day Hearing Voices awareness workshop in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, UCC

7th July 2015

One-day Hearing Voices awareness workshop in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, UCC

8th July 2015

One-day advanced Facilitation workshop for existing Hearing Voices group facilitators in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, UCC

1st September 2015

One-day Hearing Voices awareness workshop in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, NUIG

2nd September 2015

One-day Hearing Voices awareness workshop in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, NUIG

3rd September 2015

One-day advanced Facilitation workshop for existing Hearing Voices group facilitators in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, NUIG

For additional details of forthcoming events please contact Mark Monahan (Dublin), Ann Sheridan (UCD workshop), Harry Gijbels (Cork) or Siobhan Smyth (Galway)

Hearing Voices: Useful Resources

A Two-Day Conference organised by the School of Applied Social Studies and the Catherine McAuley School of Nursing and Midwifery, University College Cork, in association with the Critical Voices Network Ireland

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

Venue: Brookfield Health Sciences Complex, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.

Booking: To book a place, email h.gijbels@ucc.ie Please make sure you give your name, and indicate the day(s) you wish to attend (either Wednesday 12 November, Thursday 13 November, or both days). Booking will be confirmed by return email.

Registration: Please bring the booking confirmation slip with you to the conference registration desk on the day(s) you are attending.

The conference offers opportunities:

• to consider the value and relevance of psychiatric diagnoses in understanding and responding to a wide range of human experiences of emotional distress
• to explore critical perspectives on and creative responses beyond psychiatric diagnoses

This conference, now in its sixth year, is unique as it is free for all participants and it involves people from diverse backgrounds (self-experience, survivors, professionals, academics, carers) presenting, discussing and debating critical and creative perspectives on and beyond the dominant bio-medical approach. The 2010 conference saw the launch of the Critical Voices Network Ireland (CVNI), a network of people interested in considering and developing responses to human distress, which are creative, enabling, respectful and firmly grounded in human rights. The conference will include an open forum to discuss the on-going work of the CVNI.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers (in alphabetical order):

Wilma Boevink, experiential expert, social scientist at Trimbos-Institute, the Netherlands.  Founder of Tree (towards Recovery, Empowerment and Experiential expertise).

Pat Bracken, Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director, West Cork Mental Health Service.  Author, with Phil Thomas, of Postpsychiatry: Mental Health in a Postmodern World.  

David Harper, Reader in Clinical Psychology, University of East London.  Co-author of Deconstructing Psychopathology  and co-author/editor of Psychology, Mental Health & Distress.

Stuart Neilson lectures and writes about the autism spectrum and mental health in Adult Continuing Education UCC, incorporating his personal perspective as a client.

Olga Runciman, psychiatric survivor and chair of the Danish HVN. Works as a psychologist offering therapy to those who are often denied therapeutic help due to ‘severe mental illness’.

Jim Walsh is a self-proclaimed sceptic toward all that is accepted as certainty, or proclaimed to be ‘truth’.  Despite growing up in Northern Ireland at the height of the ‘troubles’, being subject to prolonged societal and environmental ‘stressors’ he still thinks himself lucky in life.

Concurrent Sessions: the conference also includes a series of workshops and oral presentations, related to the conference theme.

Full programme: full details will be available in early October on http://www.ucc.ie/en/nursingmidwifery/news/ and http://www.ucc.ie/en/appsoc/resconf/conf/ . Check http://www.uccconferencing.ie/walking-distance/ for accommodation.

To get to Brookfield (UCC) check http://www.ucc.ie/en/visitors/getting-here/ Parking facilities are limited around UCC. Try car park next to Kingsley Hotel, Victoria Cross (10 walk from venue via footbridge behind Western Gateway Building on Western Road). Coffees and lunches not included. There are restaurants and cafes in and around the conference venue.

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