Ráðstefnan „Þörf fyrir samfélagsbreytingar? – nýjar leiðir til þess að hugsa um geðheilbrigðismál“ fer fram dagana 27. og 28. apríl á Hilton Reykjavík Nordica. Þar verður gestum boðið að kynna sér önnur sjónarmið en þau sem hafa verið ríkjandi í geðheilbrigðismálum undanfarna áratugi. Lögð verður áhersla á notendamiðaða nálgun sem er farin að ryðja sér til rúms víða.
Ráðstefnan er samstarfsverkefni Geðhjálpar, Bevisst Likepersonsarbeid og Intentional Peer Support en fyrirlesarar eru aðilar sem hafa beitt sér á alþjóðavettvangi fyrir breyttri nálgun í geðheilbrigðismálum. Auk þeirra mun fólk með reynslu af tilfinningalegri vanlíðan og/eða fíkn leiða vinnustofur.
Skráning á vinnustofur fer fram frá klukkan 8:00 en fyrsta vinnustofan hefst klukkan 8:30. Samtals verða sjö vinnustofur yfir daginn og er hægt að sjá yfirlit yfir þær hér: socialchange.is/workshops.
Húsið opnar klukkan 8:30 og hefst formleg dagskrá klukkan 9:00. Frekari upplýsingar um fyrirlesara og dagskrá er að finna á socialchange.is/conference en þar er jafnframt hægt að kaupa miða á báða dagana eða föstudaginn.
Meðfylgjandi eru tilvitnanir í þrjá af fyrirlesurum föstudagsins:
James Davies
“If our basic needs were neglected: our need for safety, economic security, loving connection, autonomy, self-realization and meaningful work, our need to feel equal and respected, then poor emotional well-being will be an inevitable result. Materialism was therefore an unhelpful response to various deprivations. A culturally endorsed coping mechanism that ultimately backfired.”
“For the diagnostic categories for which drugs are far and away the first-line form of treatment, such as the ‘mood disorders’, ‘eating disorders’, ‘psychotic disorders’ and ‘anxiety disorders’, an average of 88% of all DSM-IV panel members had drug company financial ties.”
Andrew Scull
“As its lists of diagnoses and ‘diseases’ proliferate, the frantic efforts to distinguish ever-larger numbers of types and sub-types of mental disorder come to seem like an elaborately disguised game of make-believe.”
“It reminds insistently of how tenuous our own hold on reality may sometimes be. It challenges our sense of the very limits of what it is to be human.”
Robert Whitaker
“If you expand the boundaries of mental illness, which is clearly what has happened in this country during the past twenty-five years, and you treat the people so diagnosed with psychiatric medications, do you run the risk of turning an anger-ridden teenager into a lifelong mental patient?”
“In the United States, people with depression, bipolar, and schizophrenia are losing twelve to twenty years in life expectancy compared to people not in the mental health system.”
“With psychiatric medications, you solve one problem for a period of time, but the next thing you know you end up with two problems. The treatment turns a period of crisis into a chronic mental illness.”