SCHOOL OF APPLIED SOCIAL STUDIES AND SCHOOL OF NURSING AND MIDWIFERY
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK, IRELAND
IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE CRITICAL VOICES NETWORK IRELAND
AND IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ONLINEVENTS.CO.UK
After an absence of two years, we are pleased to welcome people back to Cork, Ireland this November, for the annual critical perspectives conference. Having held the annual conference online over the past two years, we recognise the value of engaging with a broader audience, and we would like to maintain this connection. We are therefore offering five keynote and two concurrent presentations online.
Conference theme
Lived experience of distress and mental health services is increasingly identified as significant in shaping better understandings and responses to human suffering. Lived experience informs research, activism, service development, and, to a certain extent, policy, and education. However, concerns are also expressed that lived experience is not recognised as expert knowledge. This year’s conference provides opportunities to honour the contributions of lived experience to changing knowledge, attitudes, and practices in mental health and to address some of the challenges in recognising the value of lived experience. This conference will consider:
- what do we understand by lived experience?
- what do we know about the contribution of lived experience in mental health matters?
- the diversity of lived experience
- issues of credibility and representation
- whose interests are served by and through lived experience?
- how do we create environments to honour, and nurture lived experience?
Course Content
Presenter
Harry Gijbels is a retired mental health nurse and academic with over 40 years of experience in challenging mental health practices and education. He continues to be actively engaged, for example through his work with the Hearing Voices Network Ireland. Harry’s work in activism is informed and influenced by issues of power, human rights and social justice in mental health.
Konstantina (Dina) is an independent Service User Researcher in mental health. Her doctoral and post-doctoral research has spanned a range of fields including mental health, education, child health, youth justice and social policy/social welfare. She has worked in a number of Universities in England as a Service User Researcher and held a 3-year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Patient and Public Involvement and Improvement/Implementation Science at the Service User Research Enterprise in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. She is a member of Asylum, the radical mental health magazine editorial group, as well as one of the directors of the UK-based Survivor Researcher Network Community Interest Company.
Liz Brosnan; Having spent years on the ‘outside’ as a service user, then exploring recovery and involvement work, progressing into academia, trying to make change happen on the edges of mental health systems, Liz is now working on the ‘inside’ in the heart of services to see what can be achieved with good allies. In a cv spanning decades, she has worked with many incredible people to bring service-user/survivor/persons with psychosocial disabilities/Mad voices out of the margins into the mainstream. She has worked in many arenas: local community activism, peer advocacy, user-led/survivor research, academic writing and publishing, training and education, disability rights research. Returning to work in HSE MHS mental health engagement, she is optimistic that Intentional Peer relationships, will allow us to create safe spaces within and without statutory services.
Lydia Sapouna is a Lecturer in the School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, Ireland. Her teaching, research and community contributions are primarily in the area of critical mental health, education and practice. She is very interested in the politics of mental health and the role of social activism in changing power imbalances in mental health systems.
Rai is an Open Dialogue Practitioner, international trainer and has experience of creating, establishing and managing innovative Hearing Voices Movements and influenced peer support-based projects in a range of contexts, including youth, prison, forensic, inpatient and community. She has personal experience of hearing voices, psychosis, trauma, self-harm and hospitalisation. Lived experience, and the collective wisdom developed within the Hearing Voices Network and Survivor Movement(s) are the lenses through which she approaches all of her work. These are her guiding lights. As a trainer, Rai has facilitated courses and workshops in many countries including USA, Ireland, Bosnia, Serbia, Czech Republic, Israel and Australia. Rai is engaged in research and currently undertaking a PhD in survivor knowledge. Attending a Hearing Voices
