Johann Hari, journalist and writer; author of Lost Connections: why you’re depressed and how to find hope The Power Threat Meaning Framework– Towards the identification of patterns in emotional distress, unusual experiences and troubled or troubling behaviour, as an alternative to functional psychiatric diagnosis. This book is a revised and retitled second edition of A Straight Talking Introduction to Being a Mental Health Service User(2010).

Home Page | Jacqui Dillon

Challenging, insightful and often controversial… a truly innovative and valuable book that functions both as a learning resource and an ardent call to arms.’ Hearing Voices Network– If you hear voices, HVN can help – we are committed to helping people who hear voices. We offer information, support and understanding to people who hear voices and those who support them. This is a limited numbers online workshop with the aim of creating a space for interaction and discussion for participants. Free and reduced places are limited and available on a first come first served basis.

A. New assessment tools: based on the kinds of trauma a person has experienced and its lasting effects. They also need more humane methods of eliciting recovery, e.g. counseling in which there is authentic, person to person, client-centered connection.

Drop the Disorder – And then what?! | Jacqui Dillon

Mad in America– Mad in America’s mission is to serve as a catalyst for rethinking psychiatric care in the United States (and abroad). International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (UK)– works to promote greater knowledge of the different psychological approaches to psychosis and psychotic experiences – psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural, arts-based, family and holistic approaches – and their better integration with each other and with pharmaceutical approaches. AD4E asks not 'What’s wrong with you?’ but 'What happened to you?’ a question that encourages the framing of distress as an understandable reaction to trauma, adversity, or just the struggles we all face as human beings in a difficult world. This was just what our team needed to give us the confidence to challenge the damaging ways of responding to people that have sadly become so normal. We feel fired up and ready to make a difference. I was a 26-year-old support worker sat face to face with a recently sectioned, police-escorted patient on a mental health ICU ward. As this patient looked me in the eye with what took considerable effort to fight the level of sedation they were under, they asked me… “What can you actually do for me, how can you help me, you look like a teenager, how can you help someone of my age, how can you understand what I’ve been through?”Thank you, Jacqui, totally mind blowing! Really made me think and lots of practical skills I can use in my work. The Inner Compass Initiative and Withdrawal Project– provides information, resources, tools, and connecting platforms to facilitate more informed choices regarding all things “mental health”. Jo will outline the challenge to psychiatric diagnosis and Jacqui will talk about how we can best support people without colluding with mainstream diagnostic frameworks. Since going online in 2020 we've attracted thousands more people from around the world to our annual online festival, our poetry events and our ongoing workshops.

Drop the Disorder! Challenging the culture of psychiatric Drop the Disorder! Challenging the culture of psychiatric

Jacqui Dillon is an activist, author, and speaker, and has lectured and published worldwide on trauma, abuse, hearing voices, psychosis, dissociation, and healing. She is a key figure in the international Hearing Voices Movement, has co-edited three books, published numerous articles and papers and is on the editorial board of the journal Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches. Jacqui is Honorary Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, Visiting Research Fellow at The Centre for Community Mental Health, Birmingham City University and a member of the Advisory Board, The Collaborating Centre for Values-Based Practice in Health and Social Care, St Catherine’s College, Oxford University. Jacqui’s survival of childhood abuse and subsequent experiences of using psychiatric services inform her work, and she is an outspoken advocate and campaigner for trauma informed approaches to madness and distress. Jacqui is part of a collective voice demanding a radical shift in the way we understand and respond to experiences currently defined as psychiatric illnesses. In 2017, Jacqui was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Psychology by the University of East London. The Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry– CEP exists to communicate evidence of the potentially harmful effects of psychiatric drugs to the people and institutions in the UK that can make a difference. Indigo Daya, survivor advocate, blogger, speaker, consumer academic, University of Melbourne and human rights advisor, Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council, Australia

Help and support

There will be space for questions, discussion and the sharing of ideas making for a uniquely powerful and hopeful learning experience. Thank you for this afternoon and for the passion you brought to it. It’s made me feel more hopeful that change is possible. Just want to say thank you, your perspective is so extremely refreshing and mind-opening. I’ve bought the literature and can’t wait to read more. I feel enlivened by changes in my thought process and possibilities of working with a different mind-set. This is such a simple and obvious concept and so needed, it just shows how we (society) has been conditioned to think in limiting ways about mental wellbeing. Thank you.