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Mental Health Events UK Training, Books, Resources

Go to Mental Health General Information Page for UK Organisations

Visit TEM's Journal for more Diary Dates

Critical Mental Health Forum news and events

The second issue of the newly relaunched Asylum magazine came out in June and was devoted to psychiatric medication (the first was a special issue on paranoia).  The third issue is due out soon and is likely to be a general issue.  Subscription details here: www.pccs-books.co.uk/section.php?xSec=280&xPage=1

The Soteria Network have a new website: http://www.soterianetwork.org.uk/
Donate to the network for free when buying from Amazon via this link:
http://www.soterianetwork.org.uk/donations/donations.html#amazon

The National Survivor User Network (NSUN) is now a fully independent, registered charity and has a number of ongoing projects: www.nsun.org.uk  (Tel. 0845 602 0779).  National Survivor User Network, 27-29 Vauxhall Grove, Vauxhall, London SW8 1SY

A new user-led training group called Interminds has been set up offering workshops facilitated by Rufus May and others.  There are some in London in mid-September and others around the country (Bristol, Manchester
and Newcastle):  www.intermindsevents.com

MindFreedom International are running an anti-normality campaign and are fundraising:  http://www.mindfreedom.org/join-donate

Mind's workplace campaign:
http://www.mind.org.uk/news/3372_workers_turn_to_antidepressants_as_recession
_takes_its_toll

Mind's OpenMind magazine is due to return this autumn:
http://www.mind.org.uk/campaigns_and_issues/report_and_resources/openmind

Check out FEEL's (Friends of East End Loonies) blog: http://friends-of-feel.blogspot.com/

Check out the Social Work Action Network: http://www.socialworkfuture.org/

The New York Times covers the sad death of Judi Chamberlin: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/us/31chamberlin.html  Also National Public Radio had a piece: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122706192

Upcoming training events/conferences

Working to Recovery are offering a 35% discount on the price of a one week course on working with voices with Dirk Corstens, Ron Coleman & Eleanor Longden at Hawkwood college in Stroud from 6th -10th September 2010.  Contact Ron Coleman/Karen Taylor at http://www.workingtorecovery.co.uk/

Refocus on Recovery conference, 20-22 September 2010, London.  Keynote Speakers include: Marianne Farkas; Lynne Friedli; Simon Bradstreet; Lindsay Oades.  Masterclasses by: Larry Davidson, Marianne Farkas, Lindsay Oades, Julie Repper, Diana Rose & John Larsen, Ruth Chandler & Mark Hayward, John Moody & Joanne McLean, Geoff Shepherd & Jed Boardman.  For more information on registration and abstract submission, please visit:
http://researchintorecovery.com/

Self-harm and borderline personality disorder:  Exploring practice, controversy and common ground.  Date: Monday 4 October 2010, London: http://www.pavpub.com/pavpub/conferences/showfull.asp?Conference=%20191

Midlands Psychology Group:  Beyond Ignorance, 15th - 16th October 2010, The Uffculme Centre, BIRMINGHAM  (Kate Pickett, co-author with Richard Wilkinson of The Spirit Level, David Healy, Keir Milburn, David Smail,  Allyson
Pollock).  Costs for 2 days (including lunch, tea and coffee): £95 waged, £40 unwaged.  For further details and an application form, see: www.midpsy.org

Second World Hearing Voices Congress and Intervoice Meeting:  2-4 November 2010 at Centre Parcs in Nottingham.  For further information please contact Peter Bullimore: 07714930740, Jacqui Dillon: 07951635033, Tori Reeve: 07590837017

Psychosis in Context II:  Tuesday 23rd November 2010, Nottingham. Speakers: Rufus May, Mary Boyle, Bob Diamond, Joan Busfield, Peter Bullimore, Jan Wallcraft, Tim Calton, Fiona Venner.  Delegate rate: £55. There are some free places for people with lived experience, carers and unwaged. To book a place, please contact: Jenny Poole (Team Administrator). Direct line 0115 952 9474. For further information about the conference please contact Steven Coles or Sarah Keenan

New Books

Diary Drawings: Mental Illness and Me by Bobby Baker is out now at £15:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Diary-Drawings-Mental-Illness-Me/dp/1846683742

Living with Voices: 50 Stories of recovery by Marius Romme, Sandra Escher, Jacqui Dillon, Dirk Corstens and Mervyn Morris: http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/product.php?xProd=482&xSec=116

Beyond Belief:  Alternative ways of working with delusions, obsessions and unusual experiences by Tamasin Knight.  It is available for free download at: http://www.peter-lehmann-publishing.com/beyond-belief.htm

Handbook of Service User Involvement in Mental Health Research by Jan Wallcraft and others:
www.amazon.co.uk/Handbook-Involvement-Research-Psychiatric-Association/dp/047
0997958/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282401259&sr=8-1

This is Survivor Research by Angela Sweeney, Peter Beresford, Alison Faulkner, Mary Nettle & Diana Rose (eds):
http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/product.php?xProd=467

Psychology in the Real World: Community-based Groupwork by Guy Holmes and others: http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/product.php?xProd=498&xSec=48

All author royalties to The Wellbeing Centre, Sutton Hill MIND.  Guy was recently featured on Radio 4's All in the Mind talking about his work.


PCCS Books have a Straight Talking Introductions to Mental Health Problems book series, edited by Richard Bentall and Pete Sanders: http://www.pccs-books.co.uk/section.php?xSec=267

Hearing (Our) Voices:  Participatory Research in Mental Health by Barbara Schneider:
www.amazon.co.uk/Hearing-our-Voices-Participatory-Research/dp/1442610107/ref=
sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282400163&sr=8-1

Voicing Psychotic Experiences by Ruth Chandler & Mark Hayward:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Voicing-Psychotic-Experiences-Reconsideration-Diversi
ty/dp/1841962503/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282401426&sr=1-1

Personal Recovery and Mental Illness:  A Guide for Mental Health Professionals by Mike Slade:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field- keywords=Personal+Recovery+and+Mental+Illness+A+Guide+for+Mental+Health+Professionals&x=0&y=0

Other resources

A play on hearing voices has been written by survivor, Clare Summerskill:  http://hearingvoicesplay.co.uk/index.html

Storying Sheffield is an innovative art and community project hosted at the University of Sheffield. The project involves students and people from the city working together to produce films, digital artefacts, artwork, narratives and many other representations of the lives of Sheffield people, and the 'life' of this major British city. The project works with
people who come from groups which have tended to be socially excluded, such as long-term users of mental health services. Using an exciting blend of techniques and media, Storying Sheffield is creating a living portrait of everyday life in Sheffield, and giving voice to people whose stories are rarely heard.  Website: http://www.storyingsheffield.com/
Information document: http://www.storyingsheffield.com/resources/St_Sh.pdf

Time Together (Together's free magazine): http://www.together-uk.org/news-events/publications

Papers from recent survivor history event: http://studymore.org.uk/mpu.htm#Birmingham

Our thanks go to contributors of this and other information
Contact Webmaster with news items, link requests

STOP PRESS!

MAD PRIDE EVENT

Tuesday 26 October 2010

Info/ media: 07766 124472 or 07542 459321
http://madpride.org.uk

           
Mad pride presents...
A day of action to oppose welfare benefits cuts for the "mentally ill"

Nationwide one-day medication strike!

In the first of a series of co-ordinated medication strikes, all UK mental
health service users will default on their psychiatric medication for one day, in
protest against the coming savage welfare benefits cuts. Further, all UK service
users will not engage with any mental health services whatsoever on that day, in a
bid to demonstrate our collective power.

Direct action: speakers corner, Hyde park, 1.00 pm

At 1.00 PM on Tuesday 26th October, UK mental health service users will
publicly assemble to re-enact the opening chapter of Michel Foucault's
seminal book "Discipline and Punish." A life-size effigy of a prominent Conservative/
Liberal Democrat merger politician will, at this demonstration, be publicly
executed by method of hanging, drawing and quartering, after which the
quivering remains of the body will be disposed of appropriately. We expect this to
provide an interesting photo opportunity for the media. Also expect a variety
of other visual and subliminal stunts on the day.

All mental health service users are invited!  Don't take welfare benefits
cuts lying down! Bankers - hands off our welfare benefits!

The economic downturn caused by the irresponsibility of bankers and big
business has led the new Conservative/ Liberal Democrat merger government to
enact the biggest cuts in public services since the Second World War.
Chancellor of the exchequer and St Paul's old boy George Osborne's recent
"emergency budget" announced savage cuts to welfare benefits for those
labelled disabled. Further cuts will be announced in Osborne's upcoming
"shock and awe" spending review to take place on Wednesday 20th October.
Osborne, Cameron, Clegg and their mates have been busy softening up the
public for more attacks, cutting disability benefits for those they intend to
deem fit to do "a bit" of work - even though the government's policies seem
designed to push up unemployment, to increase the reserve labour force and
thereby cut wages and increase the capitalists' profits.

The government has threatened to remove our DLA by saying that the number of
claimants must be reduced by 360,000 - which will plunge over a third of a
million people, most of whom will have mental health problems, into dire
poverty In particular, they would like the public to think that people with
depression, anxiety disorders and other "mental illnesses" are malingerers
and scroungers - when in fact most of us find it a terrible day to day
struggle just to get by.  ESA and work capability assessments have been
criticised as too tough by CABs, disability charities and disabled peoples'
organisations. The government has said that from October 2010 they will speed
up the reassessment of everyone currently claiming Incapacity Benefit so that
10,000 claimants a week are "processed." Housing Benefits for all tenants
will be reduced, commencing October 2-11 for the two million disabled people
living in private rented accommodation and from 2013 for anyone living in
social housing which is deemed too large for their needs. VAT is about to
increase to twenty per cent. But the government's wealthy friends won't even
be touched - even though they created the current economic crisis in the first place.

THIS WILL PUT LIVES AT RISK.

Already, 6,000 people a year, most of them suffering from depression, are recorded 
as having killed themselves in the UK, although the true figure is definitely far higher.
 The stress caused by the threat of welfare benefits cuts, as well as the impact of the material
deprivation that will result, will undoubtedly lead to a huge increase in suicides amongst 
people with mental health problems - an outcome Mad Pride wishes to help prevent through 
campaigning and giving each other one-to-one support. We do not wish to be alarmist. 

We wish to stress that, if we work together and help each other individually and in groups, 
we can survive. At our demonstration and subsequently, we shall distribute information 
advising people how to respond to hostile DWP communications threatening their welfare benefits
entitlements and "inviting" them to "tests," signposting them to sources of help.

Mad Pride is now an international, loosely-connected network of cells devoted
to promoting the civil liberties, social status and creative talents of
people labelled "mentally ill." It was originally formed by a small group of
people in London, whose heyday was from 1999 to 2003. This small group has
reconvened specifically to organise direct action against benefits cuts, to
take place on Tuesday October 26th.


Info/ media: 07766 124472 or 07542 459321
http://madpride.org.uk

Visit TEM's Journal for more Diary Dates

Visit the False page at Whorls for links on: False confessions, Eye witnesses; Miscarriages of Justice; Allegations of abuse, Memories; Therapy Culture; Finding Middle Ground, Mediation/Reconciliation IF YOU FIND ANY SITUATION BECOMING TOO HARD TO HANDLE THERE IS NOTHING TO BE ASHAMED OF IN ADMITTING TO YOURSELF OR OTHERS THAT YOU MAY NEED TO LEAVE IT, OR THAT YOU NEED SOME SUPPORT

HUMAN RIGHTS, Miscarriages of Justice, Prisons Updates are at TANSAL ABUSE & RIGHTS Part 1 Human Rights Resources, Campaigns Part 2 Miscarriages of Justice Articles & Books False Confessions; Part 4 Problems with Evidence, Videos Part 5 Prisoners, Families, Veterans, Mental Health, Vulnerable people