In November 2015, I made a poster presentation for the 1st European Conference on Supported Education in Groningen. The poster gives a summary in English about the Mad Studies reading groups in Amsterdam. You can see the poster here.
Category: Uncategorized
Call for Papers Disability Studies Conference Lancaster
Blijf op de hoogte!
Wil je op de hoogte blijven van Mad Studies en onze leesgroepen, vul dan hier je emailadres in.
Call for papers: Making Sense of Mad Studies
Wednesday, 30 September 2015 at 10:30 – Thursday, 1 October 2015 at 17:30 (BST), Durham, United Kingdom
Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/making-sense-of-mad-studies-tickets-17586057371
‘Making Sense of Mad Studies’ is a two day conference to be held on 30 September and 1 October 2015-funded by the Welcome Trust and hosted by the Centre for Medical Humanities at Durham University in collaboration with the North East Mad Studies Forum. The aim of the conference is to provide a platform for the development and critical exploration of the emerging discipline, Mad Studies, with specific emphasis on nurturing new researchers and collaborations in this area- both inside and outside of the University. There will be a particular critical focus on exploring the following themes:
- What are the challenges Mad Studies face and what can we do about them?
- What does ‘doing’ Mad Studies mean?
- Connections between Mad Studies and disciplines such as sociology, disability studies, geography, psychiatry, social policy, healthcare and medicine;
- Mad Studies, ‘recovery’, and the co-option of activist terms;
- Narratives of madness and distress- drawing on literature and cultural representations as a source for understanding mental distress.
We are delighted to announce that we already have five keynote speakers confirmed: Prof. Peter Beresford, Representatives from ‘Recovery in the Bin’, Prof. Brenda LeFrancois, Dr Helen Spandler, Prof. Brendan Stone.
We hope this conference provides space to begin and continue conversations, and for delegates to think about how we make sense of Mad Studies, reflecting on what Mad Studies has done and can do. If you have any questions about the conference please do not hesitate to contact Victoria Armstrong, one of the conference organisers at v.e.potts@durham.ac.uk. Also, if you have any particular access requirements please let Victoria know. We expect demand for places at this conference will be high so please book early. Booking for the event will close on 1 September 2015.
Do you have questions about Making Sense of Mad Studies? Contact Victoria Armstrong
“Saneism”: discriminatie van de “insane”
Morgen lezen we een artikel over “saneism” van PhebeAnn Wolframe
“I was aware of the discrimination I had faced as a “mentally ill” person, but I accepted that oppression. I believed, at the time, that I was sick, and I believed that this sickness caused me to hurt myself and others. Should I not then, I reasoned, be restrained by the straightjacket of unequal treatment?
It was only later when I came to reject the medical model of madness 6 that I questioned my own internalization of an oppression I came to know as saneism.”
Call for Papers: “Madness, violence, and power: A radical anthology”
~ Andrea Daley (York University, Toronto, ON, Canada)
~ Lucy Costa (Systemic Advocate, The Empowerment Council: A Voice for Clients of CAMH, Toronto, ON, Canada)
~ Peter Beresford (Brunel University, Uxbridge, England, UK)
The editors are working with an international advisory group that includes service users/survivors from the UK, Germany and Canada.
Summary of Topic
This interdisciplinary anthology will discuss violence as manifest in the lives of diversely-situated people who identify in various ways including but not limited to mental health services users; people with mental illness, psychiatric disabilities or psychosocial disabilities; psychiatric survivors/consumers, and neurodivergent (herein referred to as ‘people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system’). We are motivated by an apparently increased discussion and coverage of violence in relation to ‘mental illness’ within the public sphere including the media, governments, community agencies, and psychiatric and penal institutions.
Our goal is to challenge common ways of talking about violence related to people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system. These common ways include biomedical frameworks and statistical assertions that position people with psychiatric diagnosis as more likely to be victims of violence and enact violence compared to people without psychiatric diagnosis. This narrow binary separates violence from its social context, often reducing it to an individual issue.
The purpose of the anthology is to broaden understandings of violence in the lives of people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system and develop current debate in ways that explore the impacts of systems and institutions that manage ‘abnormality.’ Another purpose is to examine the role of service users in legal, social, policy and medical transformations in relation to such systems and institutions.
This interdisciplinary anthology will bring together people thinking, researching, writing and taking action about new considerations of power, violence, systems and institutions in relation to people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system. It will include academic and non-academic community members, activists and allies within the consumer/survivor, ex-patient and Mad movements. We are seeking first person narratives, empirical research studies (quantitative and/or qualitative), and theoretical contributions encompassing a range of critical theories including feminist, queer, critical race, intersectional and post-colonial as informed by consumer/survivor, ex-patient, Mad and critical disability movements. We welcome a broad range of contribution styles/formats including artistic contributions including poetry, visual art and photography.
We welcome papers that utilize critical conceptual frameworks that may include topics related to the following themes:
Neoliberal discourses
o How do neoliberal discourses on ‘health’ and ‘community engagement’ depoliticize issues of social (in)justice, inequality and inequity?
o How does the neo-liberal project of medicalizing social justice issues impact people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system?
Laws, legislations& policy frameworks
o How do laws, legislations and policy frameworks serve to control and govern ‘people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system? Is this violence?
o How do questions of power, autonomy and dependency underlie: hate crime legislation; employment and disability insurance policy; immigration policy; community treatment orders (CTOs); disability and mental health acts; national security policy (e.g., border crossing), implementation of recommendations from inquests into deaths of persons involved in the psychiatric systems, state power (via laws) which exclude entire groups of people such as First Nations/Indigenous from self-governance and resources?
o How can and how does the law support and improve the possibilities for citizen participation?
o What considerations should be made on the application, relevance and utility of international law to challenge violence?
o What are the barriers to accessing justice within the lower and higher courts and/or mental health tribunals? Are these barriers a type of violence?
o Do people experience violence in legal proceedings (mental health courts and/or tribunals) as a result of intersections between Aboriginality, race, ethnicity/culture, sex/gender, class, and/or living with other evident disabilities (e.g., physical disability)?
o How does law reproduce and draw from other knowledge(s) or disciplines in order to constitute itself as valid and meaningful?
The practices of institutions and the institutionalization of practices
o How the practices of institutions and the institutionalization of practices serve to enact violence upon people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system? Practices may include those within education, social services and mental health, criminal justice and policing, and employment institutions such as institutional frameworks associated with eligibility and documentation and/or record keeping; academic program requirements and research including ethics and funding criteria; police training for, and responses to, ‘emotionally distressed people’; patient management within psychiatric hospitals/institutions; constructions of mental disorders (DSM).
Restorative justice and madness
o While people who have had contact with psychiatry and the mental health system are often the victims of violence, and the risk of offending is statistically lower for mental health service users than the general public, this section will examine the enactment of violence by people who are mental health service users. Authors are asked to engage with difficult questions about ‘criminality’ within Mad/consumer/survivor communities while critically exploring issues related to the determination of ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’, the allocation of community supports and community responses to violence such as strategies for redress. We invite people who have committed violence such as assault to contribute. While not necessarily conceptualized as ‘violence’, contributions that explore experiences of self-harm will also be considered.
Questions for consideration:
o How do we analyse and address violence when enacted by individuals with mental health issues/ madness without creating a culture of silence, vilification, and apologies or excuses?
o What are the best models/frameworks to address violence that move us from the biomedical discourse of risk/safety to shared social responsibility?
o What could be the contribution of people with experience of psychiatric treatment in developing an alternative framework to understand and address violence?
o What do mental health service users with a designation of “Not Criminally Responsible” or, “Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity” feel about their experiences in the forensic system?
o What are the implications of relying on oppressive institutions/structures to address violence in the mental health service user communities?
o What is the contribution of forced psychiatry (e.g., medication, restraint, seclusion) to violence committed by (ex) psychiatric patients?
Length: Chapters should be approximately 5,000 words in length (including references), but may be shorter depending on contribution style and format (e.g., poem). Authors are invited to submit a 350-500 word abstract for consideration including author’s affiliations, contact information, and brief biography by email to the editors by MAY 29, 2015:
Andrea Daley, York University, Toronto, ON Canada, adaley@yorku.ca
Lucy Costa, The Empowerment Council, Toronto, ON Canada, ms.lucycosta@gmail.com
Peter Beresford, Brunel University, Uxbridge, England, UK, peter.beresford@brunel.ac.uk
Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken van Daniel Paul Schreber
Vanmiddag bediscussiëren we bij de Mad Studies leesgroep van stichting Perceval twee hoofdstukken uit het ego-document van Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911) “Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken”, gepubliceerd in 1903. Schreber was rechter in Dresden.
Schizofrenie-bestaat-niet, herstelfilosofie en anti-psychiatrie
Op 7 maart publiceerde psychiater Jim van Os e.a., naar aanleiding van het opstarten van de website schizofreniebestaatniet.nl, een artikel in het NRC met de titel “Laten de diagnose schizofrenie” vergeten”. Van Os en de zijnen willen de diagnose schizofrenie vervangen door de bredere benaming psychosegevoeligheid, wat volgens hen goed te behandelen is en waarbij 80% een goede prognose heeft. Als reactie daarop schreven psychiater René Kahn en anderen het stuk “Schizofrenie als diagnose schrappen is anti-psychiatrie uit de jaren 70”. Ze vergelijken het voorstel van Van Os e.a. om “schizofrenie” te vervangen door “psychosegevoeligheid”, met cardiologen die een artikel schrijven waarin zij betogen dat hartfalen niet bestaat om zich vervolgens te richten op mensen met alleen verhoogde bloeddruk.
Ervaringswerker Irene van der Giessen schrijft een blog met de titel “Een hoog semantisch kibbelgehalte!”. Ze vindt dat beide partijen het helemaal niet zo oneens met elkaar zijn. Volgens haar houden zowel Kahn als Van Os vast aan een groep mensen die een slechte prognose hebben. Kahn definieert deze groep met de diagnose schizofrenie en geeft aan dat er biologische markers te vinden zijn waardoor je deze groep kunt herkennen. Van Os wil deze groep niet te vroeg vastpinnen op de diagnose schizofrenie, als later blijkt dat ze wel kunnen herstellen. Wat ik begrijp komt Van der Giessen op voor de ‘ongelukkige’ 20% van de psychosegevoeligen van Van Os, die Kahn definieert met de diagnose schizofrenie. Van der Giessen geeft aan dat velen van deze groep wél een zinvol leven heeft kunnen verwerven. Van der Giessen: “Het waren – en zijn – mensen die u o.a. zélf als zodanig heeft gediagnosticeerd. Het ontkennen van dit feit – of mensen die herstelden van deze diagnose wegzetten als leugenaars – zet uw beroepsgroep in een nog bedenkelijker licht dan het nu al staat.” Ze raadt de psychiaters zich nader te verdiepen in de herstelfilosofie en onderzoeksgeld daarin te investeren.
Psychiater Alan Ralston, medewerker van de website schizofreniebestaatniet.nl, reageert in de blog “Attack of the 50-ft Antipsychiatrist” op het ‘anti-psychiatrie’ argument van Kahn en collegae. Hij gaat in op wat de anti-psychiatrie nou eigenlijk was (een heterogene groep mensen die om vaak zeer uiteenlopende redenen kritiek hadden op de toenmalige psychiatrie) en wat ze bereikt heeft (veel goeds heeft, in lijn met de huidige idealen in de GGZ) op basis van het proefschrift van Gemma Blok. Wat me opvalt aan het spreken van Kahn c.s. en van Ralston is het idee dat de anti-psychiatrie iets van lang geleden is. Ook heden ten dage zijn er nog anti-psychiatrie activisten die veel zinnige zaken te zeggen hebben. Bonnie Burstow schreef een duidelijke blog “Antipsychiatry Revisited: Toward Greater Clarity” over anti-psychiatrie activisme heden ten dage.
Call for Presentations: The Making Sense Of Madness Project
The Making Sense Of: Madness Project: 8th Global Meeting
Tuesday 15th September – Thursday 17th September 2015
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
Call for Presentations:
Madness: What is it? Why does it exist? Where and when does it happen? How does it happen, and to whom? Like the relation between otherness and identity, madness might have always been used to define its opposite, or defined by what it is not. Madness and its absence may even be intrinsically linked to everything we do and do not, to all we aspire and escape from; it could be part of our origins and fate. But how can it be identified, described, studied and/or treated? We propose to take an interdisciplinary approach, by which we mean one that allows us to develop dialogues about the subject from different points of view, from and between different disciplines and experiences. This will partly allow us to answer the questions above, in direct relation to the specific contexts in which madness is observed, studied and/or experienced and, it is desirable, it might also allow us all to understand that, just by being humans, none of us is actually immune to it.
Nieuw: schrijfgroep bij stichting Perceval
Uit de eerste Mad Studies leesgroep is een schrijfgroep voortgekomen. In de groep is nog ruimte voor deelnemers. Het is de bedoeling om de groep zo gevarieerd mogelijk te maken qua leeftijd, beroep en genre van schrijven et ceters. Meer informatie over de groep en aanmelding kunt u – hier – op de blog van stichting Perceval vinden.
