Madpeople's Coping Mechanisms

Madpeople/service users/psychiatric patients are a heterogenous group. Indeed, there’s evidence both of variety on a neurological level and of quite different phenomenologies even among people with the same diagnosis (e.g., bipolar disorder or schizophrenia) and/or the same “symptom label” (e.g., mania or thought insertion). It should therefore not come as a surprise that different treatments have different effects on different people.

The aim of this workshop is to move beyond a focus on diagnostic categories and statistics (e.g., 60 % of people with diagnosis A are significantly helped by  strategy X). Instead, we want to focus on psychiatric problems from the perspective of those dealing with them, how they experienced the problems, how they figured out ways to cope with or handle these problems, and why, based on the person’s own experiences and interpretations,  these strategies were helpful.

To register please email [email protected] 

SCHEDULE
(See bottom of page for abstracts and biographies)

MONDAY 25th SEPTEMBER

9.00-9.30
Welcome and coffee/tea

9.30-10.30
Anne O’Donnell 
'You think too much, that's your problem.'

10.45-11.45
Ida Hallgren
'A fluent mind and a box: Fitting the cycles of life and creativity into a rigid work society.'

12.00-1.00
Matthew Jackman
'The politics of my experience: From madness to international mad activism.'

LUNCH

2.30-3.30
Zoey Lavellee and Anne-Marie Gagné-Julien (online)
'Affective injustice and psychiatric coping.'

3.45-4.45
Steph Ban (online)
'Applying a neurodiversity movement lens to living with obsessive-compulsive disorder.'

5.00-6.00
Michele Desmarais and Fraser Mackenzie
'Calls: A mad stories project.'

TUESDAY 26th SPETEMBER

9.00-9.30
Coffee/Tea

9.30-10.30
Michael Dickson
'Intellectual humility.'

10.45-11.45
Michele Merritt
'Rethinking suicidality in the context of suicide-affirmative healthcare: A survivor’s perspective.'

12:00-1.00
Mia Joy and Patrick Salas
'Mad camp as a site of mad activism and movement - our collective coping mechanisms.'

Please note:
We endeavor to follow the BPA guidelines for accessible conferences.