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Post by Admin on Apr 25, 2022 16:03:22 GMT
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Post by Admin on May 16, 2022 12:59:16 GMT
19 April 2022 New funding for Global Majority-led arts organisations to develop creative work with people with mental health problems Grants of up to £60K available for Global Majority led arts organisations to develop their work in mental health. baringfoundation.org.uk/news-story/new-funding-for-global-majority-led-arts-organisations-to-develop-creative-work-with-people-with-mental-health-problems/Patient and Public Involvement in National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) research 2006-2021: intentions, progress and themes from the patient and public perspective oxford.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/patient-and-public-involvement-in-national-institute-for-h‘Critical perspectives on the lived experience of distress and mental health services’ 14th Annual Critical Perspectives in Mental Health Conference cvni.ie/2022-2/Bipolar life bipolarlife.uk/Peer Support and Community Group Forum - May to October 2022 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/peer-support-and-community-group-forum-may-to-october-2022-registration-333466777107Ambivalent Activism: Online Seminar Series Series Coordinators: Prof. Akwugo Emejulu, University of Warwick, Dr. Marlies Kustatscher, University of Edinburgh and Dr. Callum McGregor, University of Edinburgh ambivalentactivism.wordpress.com/Webinar on disbelief and disregard in healthcare 5 May 2022 catherinehale3394 ELCI Challenging Disbelief and Disregard in relation to Medicine, Chronic Illness and Disability chronicillnessinclusion.org.uk/2022/05/05/webinar-on-disbelief-and-disregard-in-healthcare/The Big Emerging Minds Summit Monday 17th October 2022 | St Catherine's College, Oxford Are you passionate about mental health research making a difference to children, young people, and families? What's it all about? Join us in beautiful Oxford (or online) on 17th October 2022 for The Big Emerging Minds Summit. The Summit will bring together delegates from across sectors and disciplines with a range of experiences, skills and perspectives, all with a passion for mental health research that will make a difference to children, young people, and families. We want you to: leave the Summit feeling inspired and motivated, with new ideas and new perspectives, ready to continue to work together on mental health research that will make a difference. Have the time and space to talk to your fellow delegates, share your own ideas and learn more about theirs; and find the event practically useful. emergingminds.org.uk/summit/The Colour Blue michellebaharier.co.uk/the-colour-blue/Blog The importance of personalised care and personal health budgets in addressing health inequalities for people within minority groups www.england.nhs.uk/blog/the-importance-of-personalised-care-and-personal-health-budgets-in-addressing-health-inequalities-for-people-within-minority-groups/Bridging the gaps in mental health services: the need for joined up service provision www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/blogs/bridging-gaps-mental-health-services-need-joined-service-provision“My Doctor is Lacking Insight”: Alternative Experiences of Insight in Mental Health [Content Warning: Discussion of suicidal ideation and iatrogenic harm] www.psychiatryisdrivingmemad.co.uk/post/my-doctor-is-lacking-insightConsequences ‘dire’ if Human Rights Act ditched, more than 50 groups warn Exclusive: PM is told tearing up act could endanger women and girls and damage peace in Northern Ireland www.theguardian.com/law/2022/may/09/consequences-dire-human-rights-act-ditched-northern-ireland-boris-johnsonOpen letter: ‘managed migration’ from ‘legacy benefits’ to Universal Credit Posted on 9 May 2022 NSUN has signed an open letter alongside other UK charities to the Secretary of State for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), Thérèse Coffey, to demand that plans to restart ‘managed migration’ are immediately halted. ‘Managed migration’ is the process the DWP are using to transfer people on ‘legacy benefits’ (e.g. income related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, and Jobseekers Allowance) across to the Universal Credit system. Starting today (9th May 2022), people receiving these benefits will gradually be asked to move to Universal Credit by 2024. The DWP will be telling people that they have a three-month deadline to apply from when they have been notified, and if this is missed, their current benefit claim may be stopped. Anyone unable to engage with the process may be affected and could have their income stopped, with devastating and life-threatening consequences. The full text of the open letter is pasted below. www.nsun.org.uk/news/open-letter-managed-migration-to-uc/
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Post by Admin on May 18, 2022 21:33:35 GMT
Mental Health Awareness Month: 6 Films That Actually Depict Mental Illness Well www.ask.com/entertainment/films-that-depict-mental-illness-wellMEANINGFUL RECOVERY from Schizophrenia and Serious Mental Illness with Clozapine: Hope & Help by Dr. Robert S. Laitman MD (Author), Dr. Lewis A. Opler MD PhD (Author), Dr. Ann Mandel Laitman MD (Author), Daniel Laitman (Author) ARE YOU...A MOTHER, A FATHER who has lost all hope of being able to help your child…A WIFE, A HUSBAND who struggles to mentally support a loved one lost in a deep dark place…A STUDENT, AN ADULT, A VETERAN who fears life itself and has dropped out school and work…A PSYCHIATRIST who has diligently tried every antipsychotic medicationfor your patient but with no success…A PSYCHOLOGIST who has watched with frustration as your patient swirls on a merry-go-round of hospitals and wilderness escapes…A SOCIAL WORKER who has helplessly witnessed your client lurch down a destructive path…THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU.When the Laitman’s son Daniel was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia just before his 16th birthday...they thought that, as physicians, they would be able to negotiate the psychiatric healthcare maze easier than most families. They were told early on that the medication clozapine would be Daniel’s best chance at living a normal life, but found it was prescribed in very few cases. There was also a lack of comprehensive information on how to mitigate any side effects and how to use the medication to get the best outcome. This book is Dr. Lewis Opler’s story of the beginnings of clozapine, why it came to be regarded by much of the psychiatric community as a medication of last resort, and why that should no longer be the case. You’ll also read the story of Daniel’s recovery both from his perspective and that of his parents and learn how to help your practitioner use clozapine optimally to help in the journey toward living a fulfilled life after the diagnosis of schizophrenia. A Caregiver Story: Learning How to Be a Caregiver for Our Daughter with Schizophrenia www.familycaregiversbc.ca/archives/15157Schizophrenia: Gene discovery indicates risk and cause Researchers have discovered gene mutations that indicate a person's risk of developing schizophrenia and its causes. This may help improve drug treatments. www.dw.com/en/schizophrenia-gene-discovery-indicates-risk-and-cause/a-61379102Community Assistance, Recovery & Empowerment CARE Court is a proposed framework to deliver mental health and substance use disorder services to the most severely impaired Californians who too often languish – suffering in homelessness or incarceration – without the treatment they desperately need. www.chhs.ca.gov/care-court/
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Post by Admin on May 23, 2022 13:55:53 GMT
19 April 2022 New funding for Global Majority-led arts organisations to develop creative work with people with mental health problems Grants of up to £60K available for Global Majority led arts organisations to develop their work in mental health. baringfoundation.org.uk/news-story/new-funding-for-global-majority-led-arts-organisations-to-develop-creative-work-with-people-with-mental-health-problems/Bipolar life bipolarlife.uk/Challenging Disbelief and Disregard in relation to Medicine, Chronic Illness and Disability chronicillnessinclusion.org.uk/2022/05/05/webinar-on-disbelief-and-disregard-in-healthcare/Un-care-able Stories of self-harm and the impossibility of care www.cost-ofliving.net/un-care-able/In 1987 renowned psychiatrist Armando Favazza, in his field-defining book on self-injury Bodies Under Siege, declared (with remarkable confidence) that “no one loves self-mutilators” (244). In fairness to Favazza, he makes the statement in order to elicit sympathy for the so-called ‘self-mutilators’, but nonetheless, I found the statement troubling, or perhaps just straightforwardly upsetting. In part, of course, I found it upsetting because it seems like such a horrifying generalisation, which I know is entirely untrue. But it was also upsetting because of how much it often does feel true, and moreover how often it seems to be proved true. And indeed this contention, that people who self-harm are not loved – or in my phrasing ‘cared for’ – is at the heart of my recent doctoral research into fictional depictions of self-harm. Having read and watched a wide range of books, TV shows, and films which included self-harm, and having discussed them with people who had experience of self-harm, a concern that we all shared was how often fictional characters who self-harmed were portrayed as hard to care for. We talked about how they were presented as difficult to understand, as incomprehensible – for instance, like Glenn Close’s character in Fatal Attraction. We talked about how they were framed as melodramatic, as over-the-top or even glamorous, and therefore inauthentic, like Effy in Skins. We talked about how often self-harming characters felt embarrassing or pathetic, and therefore hard to sympathise with, like Violet in American Horror Story. We talked about how often recovery was the way that stories about self-harm ended, from Girl Interrupted to Young Adult novels like Melody Carlson’s Blade Silver. This conclusion seemed to be the only way for self-harming characters to succeed, to gain approval – they deserved care, so long as they stopped self-harming. Over and over characters who continued to self-harm put themselves ‘beyond care’ by engaging in a practice which narratives took to be self-evidently ‘wrong’, and which thus positioned the characters themselves as mistaken and incorrect. And over and over again, for the people I talked to, this spilled over from fiction into life, where these stories caused mis-perceptions of self-harm and encouraged carelessness or even cruelty. This wasn’t what I had anticipated the over-arching argument of my PhD would be – but perhaps I should have predicted it. Because as I’ve talked about elsewhere, there’s no doubt that the care provided for people who self-harm is often inadequate, or even harmful. And while Favazza’s statement might seem simply old-fashioned or out-of-date, in fact such attitudes undoubtedly persist. It was saddening (if unsurprising) that a recent report by Alison Faulkner and Rachel Rowan Olive, evaluating the wonderful charity Self-Injury Support, found that the most significant theme among people who self-harm was “difficult, sometimes punitive experiences in A&E and with mental health services” in which they were often judged as “deliberately manipulative, attention-seeking, or time-wasting.” We might find such continued attitudes shocking – but can we really be surprised by them? And in particular, can we really frame them as the ‘exception’, as the preserve of just a few bad apples? I would suggest not. It’s worth bearing in mind the association between self-harm and the much-contested diagnostic label ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’ (BPD). When self-harm was initially included in the so-called ‘Psychiatrist’s Bible’, the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual (DSM), it was listed as a diagnostic criteria for BPD. And while the two are now listed separately, and many (perhaps the majority of) people who self-harm do not receive such a diagnosis, there undeniably remains a link between the two. And this link, to me, came into particular focus reading a recent advert for a Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) event on Personality Disorders which states without evidence that “PD patients […] cause considerable distress to both themselves and those around them.” And this statement is, I think, instructive. Because it makes (shockingly) clear the fact that the unthinking response to people in great distress is to see them as “causing” that distress – both in themselves and in those around them. By being distressed, upset, self-harming, or simply ‘mad’ we cease to be people experiencing difficulty and become the source of that difficulty. In many ways (as Faulkner and Rowan Olive also note), we seem to have made precisely no progress since the 1980s when Favazza wrote. Indeed he cited Frances, who declares that “of all disturbing patient behaviours, self-mutilation is the most difficult to understand and treat” such that the clinician is left feeling “helpless, horrified, guilty, furious, betrayed, disgusted, and sad” (Favazza, 244) – the RCP might as well have quoted this on their advert. Both now and then self-harm stops being something we do to ourselves – it becomes something we have done to those around us. In such a context, it is hardly surprising that Faulkner and Rowan Olive report poor experiences with mental health services. The difficulties of such attitudes go beyond the need, so frequently at the centre of mental health campaigns, for ‘awareness.’ To me, it seems even beyond the tendency to focus on ending ‘stigma’ – ‘stigma’ is too general, too mild a word for what is happening here. This is rejection, it is a casting out, it is the designation of ‘un-care-able’. In a sleight of hand so swift as to be both bewildering and dazzling, the more a person who self-harms needs care, the more they prove themselves to be both undeserving of it and unfit for it. Here pain is not evidence of need, and thus a prompt for care – instead, it is the signal for abandonment. In their “unreserved apology” for the Personality Disorder event and its advertising material, the RCP claims that it “represents the opposite to the College’s values.” But when such an advert successfully passes through the steps to publication without a single person raising concerns, when poor care for self-harm remains prevalent, as Faulkner and Rowan Olive demonstrate, how can clinical bodies claim such “values”? How can they deny that the “values” of clinicians remain those that lead to cruel and punitive care? And how can they suggest that simply “working collaboratively” with those with lived experience will resolve these failures? It is here that a return to the question of fiction and culture might be important – because looking at the stories that we tell about self-harm we can see the breadth, the depth, the longevity of the views which might lead to self-harm’s un-care-ability. And if we recognise that the people who are supposed to provide care for those who self-harm will have been steeped in this culture, in these stories, we might begin to understand both the scope of the problem, and the place we might start addressing it. It is only by knowing the building blocks that make self-harm un-care-able that we might be able to tear down this way of working, of knowing, of responding. This requires widespread education and change – not simply a hollow re-iteration of ‘values’ which are not in evidence. I do not believe that it’s impossible to care for people who self-harm, not in the slightest. But to make that care the norm, rather than the exception, we have to start with the spaces, stories, and systems of un-care-abilty, and we have to see changing them as our most urgent priority. Alarm as leak reveals Prevent ‘carrying the weight’ for mental health services People ‘who do not necessarily pose terrorism risk’ referred to anti-extremism programme to speed up access to support www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/17/alarm-as-leak-reveals-prevent-carrying-the-weight-for-mental-health-servicesPeter B interview History of SOL with subtitles www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKSwAelKHw8Exclusion, Coercion, and Neglect: the Neoliberal Co-option of Positive Risk-Taking www.psychiatryisdrivingmemad.co.uk/post/neoliberal-co-option-of-positive-risk-taking
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Post by Admin on Jun 6, 2022 22:26:38 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jun 15, 2022 20:27:50 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jul 7, 2022 16:47:19 GMT
‘Alarming crisis’ as one in eight people now taking antidepressants www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/alarming-crisis-as-one-in-eight-people-now-taking-antidepressants/ar-AAZjtSnOne in eight people in England are taking antidepressants after the pandemic fuelled demand for medication, NHS statistics show. Charities said the official figures were an “alarming” sign of an escalating crisis, with the numbers taking the pills rising by more than half a million in one year. The statistics show a record 8.3 million people prescribed the drugs, of whom two thirds were female. It comes after the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) said in November that people suffering mild depression should be offered a choice of exercise or therapy instead of being put on pills. The body recommended group classes in areas such as meditation or behavioural therapy, or opting for individual counselling sessions. Last year Prof Sir Stephen Powis, national medical director for the NHS in England, said doctors were too often offering “a pill for every ill’’, warning that over-prescribing was costing the NHS “millions”. The new statistics released by the NHS Business Services Authority show that since 2015/6, the total number of people on antidepressants has risen by 22 per cent. Olly Parker, head of external affairs at charity YoungMinds, said: “These figures are yet another alarming sign of the crisis in mental health services for young people. Record numbers are trying to access support and very often find the options are limited.” Mr Parker said medication could play an important role but “should never be a substitute for talking therapies such as counselling”. “Long waiting times and high thresholds for treatment may mean that GPs feel under pressure to prescribe medication, but it shouldn’t be used as a sticking plaster for poor access to other forms of support,” he said. Alexa Knight, associate director for policy and practice at Rethink Mental Illness, said the fallout from the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis were adding to pressures on mental health. But she said the rising numbers taking medication “could also be a welcome indicator that people feel more comfortable seeking support when they need it”. She said patients should be offered a choice of treatments, including talking therapies. In the year 2020/21 8.32 million were prescribed antidepressants - up 540,000 in one year, the statistics show. Among them were 71,000 children and young people aged 17 and under - where prescribing rose by nine per cent in a year. Of those, almost 12,000 were aged between 10 and 14, while 780 were below the age of 10. Lockdown exacerbated mental health Last year a survey by mental health charity Mind found that two thirds of adults said their mental health had worsened since the first national lockdown. One quarter of those polled said they had experienced mental distress for the first time during the pandemic. Stephen Buckley, head of information at Mind, said that “while antidepressants are effective for many, they are not always suitable for everyone and can cause a number of unpleasant side effects so it’s vital GPs offer a range of potential options. For most people, it’s a combination of medication and other treatments that help best manage their mental health, which may include talking therapies, exercise and other alternative therapies.” The figures show the NHS spent a total of £247 million on antidepressants in 2021/22. The new data show that women were around twice as likely to be prescribed antidepressants as men, with 5.5 million women prescribed the drugs in 2021/22 compared with 2.8 million men. Mr Buckley said that a successful plan for this crisis “must also address and tackle the many social inequalities that affect our mental health”, with separate research suggesting that women saw larger rises in psychological distress than men during the pandemic. Studies show women were more likely than men to have gained weight since the first lockdown, with researchers saying many women took on more of the stresses of home schooling. Last year the Department of Health released plans to tackle an overall rise in pill consumption, by tackling “overprescribing”. Officials warned of “a paternalistic tendency” for health professionals to “treat the illness not the person”.
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Post by Admin on Jul 11, 2022 12:28:20 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jul 18, 2022 9:48:16 GMT
Dear member, In the first half of 2022, the NSUN team took some time to reflect on how we work, why we do the work we do, and the spaces we work in. We now want to share some of the key points that emerged from this. As we grow, we wanted to think about our place in a rapidly shifting landscape. Lived experience appears to be climbing to the top of many agendas, but user-led organisations like NSUN remain outliers. In policy settings, lived experience is often tokenised or co-opted, othered, and not truly heard. The complexities of marginalised identities and communities are often erased. We wanted to reflect on our role within the mental health ecosystem, and think about who we are serving by attempting to formulate policy within current structures and silos. We also wanted time and space to think about the personal cost of doing this work. At the same time, we wanted to reflect on our role as an infrastructure organisation for grassroots community groups. Many don’t explicitly describe themselves as user-led, or as being primarily mental health-focussed. Most understand mental health intersectionally. None see their work as an add-on to statutory services. Their centre of gravity is their own self-defined community and that community’s specific needs. Traditional funding and capacity-building structures currently keep these groups precarious, excluding them from funding streams due to capacity, funding, or evidence requirements. We want to meet groups where they are at. We want to honour their mission and make the case for the often-invisible labour of grassroots groups to be valued, understood, and funded. Throughout our reflective process, we formulated a Theory of Change to express our new strategy and clarify our priorities and long term goals. You can view our Theory of Change in full here. In this email, we share some of the key points that emerged from the process and the Theory of Change. In the coming weeks, we will share more of our thinking through staff blogs on our specific areas of work. Our priorities: key themes of work Knowledge: we want to build, amplify and distribute the knowledge that is held by people with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress and trauma Collaboration: we want to create collaborative spaces with members and partners through coalitions and networks to build momentum and sustainability for the work. We hope to build nurturing conditions within mental health work that prioritise care Voice: we want to build an alternative approach to mental health policy work, challenging traditional silos, unjust hierarchies of evidence, and harmful demands for data and visibility. This comes at a time where the external environment is one of hostile and unjust structures, systems and legislation Resourcing: we want to work with funders, and act as a microfunder to redistribute resources to grassroots user-led groups and establish better practice Our long term hopes By working on these themes as our priorities, we hope to contribute towards the following long term goals: For the plurality of lived experiences to be centred in the mental health space and acknowledged as legitimate knowledge For collective power to be built, sustained and exercised by grassroots groups For re-imagined mental health policy structures For the redistribution of power and resource in mental health What we don’t do Thinking critically about what we do not do went hand in hand with thinking about the work we do. A seat at the policy table comes at a cost. Too often, we are asked to be “the voice” of all survivors and service users in decision-making settings, when there is no such thing as one survivor and service user voice. We recognise that our participation in certain processes or initiatives can often inadvertently validate or legitimise harmful work. We can end up not being heard, ticking someone else’s inclusion box, and perpetuating the status quo. We have created a decision-making matrix to help us decide which work we should be taking on, clarifying what we can change and what we need to focus on. This work is still emerging, and these questions will change. We recognise that we have a lot to learn as we seek to put this into practice and we won't always get it right. Some of the questions we are asking ourselves when considering taking on new pieces of work include: Is the work ethical? Is there scope to meaningfully influence as part of this work or effect change for our members? Where the work involves sharing or collecting people’s experiences with significant emotional or other investment, is the likelihood of people’s lived experience being heard proportionate? Is another organisation better placed to do this work? Our guiding ethos We want our work moving forwards to be underpinned by a set of guiding principles, including: Centering lived experience in its plurality and acknowledging lived experience as a legitimate form of knowledge Prioritising self-determination in mental health care Committing to transformative justice and structural changes that transform the material conditions of people’s lives Open ways of working together: being rooted in collaboration; encouraging generosity, care and uncertainty in our ways of working Summary As a user-led organisation, we bring to the mental health sector a focus on lived experience and a commitment to social justice. We sit in a unique place, between the grassroots and the mainstream, and at the intersection of health, disability, and human rights. We have a renewed focus on racial and migrant justice. We remain a network of community groups and people who have experience of mental distress, ill-health, or trauma. With our refreshed strategic direction, we hope to model different ways of working, reject harmful traditional policy structures, resist external pressures, and ground ourselves firmly in working with members towards the redistribution of power and resources in mental health and beyond. We are not one voice: we are a network of many. While we as an organisation may campaign or take a stand on policy issues, informed by what we hear from our membership, we do not have - nor do we seek - the authority to speak on behalf of anyone. Our aim is to strengthen, amplify, and build connections with and between grassroots groups and people with lived experience so that they can create meaningful change for their and our communities. We want to thank Lena Mohamed, who facilitated our reflection process and formulated our new Theory of Change. Thank you to NSUN members for your wisdom, insights, and inspirational ways of working: our thinking is grounded in what we have learned from you. Thank you for taking the time to read this update from us. With warm wishes, The NSUN team NSUN THEORY OF CHANGE www.nsun.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/NSUN-THEORY-OF-CHANGE-2022.pdf(In)Visibility in policy work: when more data isn’t always the answer www.nsun.org.uk/news/invisibility-in-policy-work-when-more-data-isnt-always-the-answer/I am not your critical friend charitysowhite.org/blog/I-am-not-your-critical-friendThe next phase Synergi is an ambitious and exciting programme of work which focuses on the intersection of racial justice and mental health. Hosted by NSUN, and held by a governance board including Catalyst 4 Change, the second phase of Synergi will centre lived experience and community action. synergicollaborativecentre.co.uk/
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Post by Admin on Aug 1, 2022 13:27:10 GMT
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Post by Admin on Aug 15, 2022 22:14:18 GMT
Briefing 58: Poverty, economic inequality and mental health www.centreformentalhealth.org.uk/publications/briefing-58-poverty-economic-inequality-and-mental-healthEd Davie 26 July 2022 The Covid-19 pandemic is being accompanied by a substantial rise in demand for mental health services. Whilst investment in mental health services is vital, it is also necessary to tackle the factors that cause and worsen mental ill health in the first place. Poverty, economic inequality and mental health, by Ed Davie, explores evidence about the links between these factors, showing that living in poverty increases people’s risk of mental health difficulties, and that more unequal societies have higher overall levels of mental ill health. The briefing also demonstrates that poverty and economic inequality intersect with structural racism to undermine the mental health of racialised and marginalised groups in society. The evidence is clear that poverty, deprivation and economic inequality are toxic to mental and physical health. Policy makers need to prioritise reducing them as an urgent public health necessity. The briefing calls for concerted and concrete actions to improve mental health by increasing the incomes and reducing the costs of the poorest people in society. These include increasing benefits and paying the Living Wage, help with housing and childcare costs for the least well-off, and improving access to vital services in the most deprived areas.
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Post by Admin on Aug 22, 2022 12:22:32 GMT
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Post by Admin on Sept 20, 2022 12:23:32 GMT
The Disabled Poets Prize – a new way of celebrating work by deaf and disabled poets 1 September 2022 This guest post was kindly written by Jamie Hale When I started writing as a poet it was against the backdrop of constant inaccessibility. Open Mic nights that were upstairs, big showcases without British Sign Language interpretation. As a wheelchair user many opportunities were immediately closed off to me – and this is why I was so delighted to launch the Disabled Poets Prize. With entries open until the 31st of October 2022, we are looking for the best poem, best unpublished pamphlet and best poem performed in British Sign Language by a UK-based deaf and/or disabled poet. I founded it with Spread the Word, CRIPtic Arts and Verve Poetry Press & Festival as partners, with further financial support from myself, Nathalie Teitler, and others. We are currently fundraising to cover the remaining costs this year, and to support this as an annual award – donate here. Starting these awards makes me feel very complete. When I started my career, I had a lot of support and mentoring from people and organisations, but I very much felt that I was creating a path against constant barriers. When I founded CRIPtic Arts, this was in an effort to dismantle some of these barriers, by creating accessible opportunities for development and showcasing for deaf and disabled people, while also working to challenge inaccessibility in the industry. CRIPtic Arts works cross-genre, but my initial creative practice was in poetry. I continued working as a poet, including creating my solo poetry and monologue show NOT DYING, which featured at the Lyric Hammersmith and Barbican Centre in 2019 and for which I was awarded the 2021 Evening Standard Future Theatre Fund Award for Theatremaker/Director of the Year. I also completed my first pamphlet, Shield, an intimate exploration of shielding and mortality in the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was published in January 2021 by Verve Poetry Press. I was also awarded one of the three Jerwood Poetry Fellowships in 2021, which gave me time to work on my own poetry, and bring a collection together. However, I was also committed to using some of the finances and my profile for other things – including launching the Disabled Poets Prize. I hope that it can bring to prominence the work of other deaf and disabled poets, who are constantly denied access to other opportunities. With the three awards, we’re hoping to find and feature some very different work from a diverse range of deaf and disabled poets – but it was important to us that the awards were more than just a title, which is why for each category first prize is £500, second prize is £250, third prize is £100, and there are three ‘highly commended’ entries which will be awarded £50, as well as a range of professional development awards and opportunities. The best unpublished pamphlet will also receive a publication contract from Verve Poetry Press – the award-winning publisher of Shield and a press committed to finding and developing new work and new writers. Find out more about the prize and how you can enter shapingourlives.org.uk/2022/09/01/the-disabled-poets-prize/The emotional labours of lived experience www.sarahmobrien.com/blogs/the-emotional-labours-of-lived-experienceAs someone who could have a fair amount of my life defined by the trauma I’ve experienced, if I wanted it to be defined that way, I'm not necessarily a fan of having to share that. I’ve become reticent towards revealing the things about myself that I don’t feel that others need to know, to offload the things that prove my worthiness to others by opening up vulnerabilities they shouldn’t have access to. Too often being involved in a piece of work as a public contributor or as a person with lived experience or whichever label fits best means opening up these parts of yourself to validate the space you take up. While others are allowed “a seat at the table” by virtue of their professional qualifications or roles the ‘qualifications’ I hold are generally centred around a laundry list of conditions, performed expertise and the emotional toll of bringing up what others find most relevant about my past today. So I no longer share all of myself with anyone who feels entitled to ask, it's something I've become quite protective about. I’ve found ways to be protective of myself and I’ve sort of hidden these parts behind many layers of how I choose to interact with involvement and lived experience work. So much of my diagnoses and lived experience, whether deemed relevant or not, is wrapped up in things that are fairly traumatic. So, they're not the things that I happily describe to the stranger on any given weekday during yet another ‘co-production workshop’ (which would more accurately be titled a consultation/focus group than co-production in most cases) when they ask me why I'm in the room. They’re experiences that I drew up without having to label or specify to their most granular minutiae, I think sometimes it's one of those things where I could talk about the things that have gotten me where I am, but I don't necessarily dwell on them. The parts of ourselves that feel foundational don’t need to be dredged up, they can inform us without being called out explicitly. These foundations, even if I try not to be cognisant of them in every thought form part of everything I do. I can do this without others having to know that I acknowledge them and everything that I do. If I gave every piece of what I thought, felt and experienced up I'm not sure what I would have left. That's one of the real issues that I've found with being a public contributor, we’re expected to mine ourselves for the work of others, to continue burrowing into the things that have been difficult to make ‘new’ things better. Being that person with lived experience, being someone who is involved in yet another project, there isn't always the emotional mopping up to manage and deal with what someone has experienced and what they're sharing at that moment. So instead, I don't give all the details that I used to give. Someone doesn't need to know my diagnosis. What they do need to know are my access needs and they need to know my opinions, my views, and the experience that I’m bringing, they need to know it on my terms. Not on terms that I've come to realise can be exploitative. There's an emotional labour to digging into these traumatic things time and time again, uncovering them for a fresh audience who then take these parts of you away and hold that part of you with them wherever they go next, able to do with it what they see fit. Something that those who work professionally, who don't lean into their personal lives, don't seem to understand is that when the division between the personal and professional is nothing, not even a blurred line that can make it really difficult to put boundaries. Even when you put these boundaries up they’re generally not the kind that others necessarily respect, if you’re there on unequal terms, to be the '“voice of lived experience” then asserting what you will and will not share can be difficult to uphold. Being given entry to a space through your lived experience does not make your history an open book, in good environments, this is understood and respected, in bad environments, it can be the small cuts made to open you up without even realising. When I speak about the importance of inclusive facilitation and working with empathy it extends to these interactions and how power manifests itself in each interaction or phrase. So the trauma then gets hidden, the experiences reworded until they’re sanitised and palatable, until they're easily digested for the situation that you're in. It’s not unauthentic to provide a bit of bravado or facade until you feel able to reveal the layered authenticity. If you give all of yourself all at once, there's no way to keep that going. It's unsustainable. It's something I found to be incredibly unsustainable when I've been working previously. I would give so much of myself, reveal the thing that then set ears burning. Then I realised I didn't have to. I didn't have to justify my existence. I didn't have to give the details that prove my point. I just had to say what I wanted to say and how I want to say it. I didn't have to pour open everything. Someone wasn't gonna see again, half an hour from now. That's the thing. A lot of what we do is asking us to open up the traumatic, to lay ourselves bare, that is something we are able to do, it's just deciding what those terms are. I’m not quite there yet with figuring out my terms of engagement, I know I don’t have to label my specific diagnoses if I don’t want to, I don’t have to talk about the process to get here, I don’t have to be explicit in what I’ve experienced. I can talk with confidence knowing that my place is justified in the space by the space I talk up, not the space I try to fill in other’s expectations.
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Post by Admin on Oct 10, 2022 3:57:11 GMT
Law & Mental Health Conference www.lawconferences.org/The Law & Mental Health Conference is the premiere online educational event dedicated to the intersection of law and mental illness. Since 2000 the Conference has brought together expert speakers and teachers with legal, clinical, and lived experience. The Conference is designed for attorneys, law enforcement, public and private clinicians; public healthcare and hospital administrators, social workers, policy designers and legislators, and organizations and individuals involved with the care and welfare of people with mental illness, addiction, and alcoholism.
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Post by Admin on Oct 17, 2022 14:34:08 GMT
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