I read your introduction as saying the speakers had both lived experiences and were clinicians... Only to discover you were referring to a peer worker, who is not classed as a clinician here in Australia, has no AHPRA (health professional) registration... provides non-clinical services... Yet you call them a clinician??? Unfortunately this sets me up to be disappointed in the peer worker, for lacking clinical competency, rather than just appreciating the input of a peer worker, who makes their living from their lived experience. I didn't read anything that specified any of the contributors were truly clinicians - psychiatrists etc, registered health professionals at least - and I would have been fascinated if this conference genuinely was groundbreaking in its foregrounding of their experiences. They do exist, I can think of several practicing psychiatrists with lived experience of serious mental illness.
Hi Heather, Thanks again for your comment. I didn’t refer to a specific presenter who was / is both a clinician and PWLE. I don’t see where I refer to Lorna as a clinician. I think she does a great job in communicating her experiences in plain language, but also is aware of the technical jargon around her diagnoses (something no doubt helpful for peer workers). There were a number of psychiatrists who presented at this year’s conference. I too would be interested in a conference foregrounding clinicians with lived experiences of mental illness - excellent suggestion! - Josh
Just my two cents. As someone with both lived experience and enough education to have become a clinician, I ultimately opted out because psychiatry, for me, felt like a joke. The field is far too rigid and colonized for me to have ever thrived in it. That said, I can’t stand when lived experience is dismissed, as though those of us living with a diagnosis don’t have a deep, often intimate understanding of it. This is exactly why I’ve chosen to distance myself from psychiatry.
Hi Sher, Thanks for your comment. I think that’s great that you’ve found that out for yourself. I do, however, think that we have to contend with evaluations of psychiatry (psychology, philosophy, therapy, etc.) as too rigid and colonized, which would seem to exclude the freedom of thought to rethink these disciplines. I for one am hopeful and excited at the opportunity for mental health to expand beyond its current restrictions. - Josh
I’m glad to see you’re rethinking—it’s a meaningful start for the field. Many of us have already decolonized, reimagined, and rebuilt our mental health outside of psychiatry. In my opinion, the better approach is to build bridges with community mental health, leaning into shared knowledge with humility.
Hi Sher, Thanks again for your comments. I wish that I had the confidence which would allow me to say the critical work of rethinking these things has a completion! While I agree that building bridges with community mental health is the way to go, I do not think we can do this by excluding psychiatry (psychometry, psychology, etc.), which at least some people with lived experience find helpful. Nor, do I think that psychiatry need be the dominant approach to all matters mental health. - Josh
Hi Heather, Lorna here. Just to clarify, you are right -- I am not a registered health professional, although I have worked in the NHS as a peer support worker and now I advise health professionals and do qualitative research. My perspective, my outlook comes from being an artist, creative health practitioner and researcher - always guided by my lived experience of severe mental illness. Yes it would be very interesting to hear psychiatrists talk about their own lived experience of SMI.
I wish I had gone to this conference, it sounds fascinating - even us vulnerable people can be exposed to risky ideas by the way! I take a very conventional view to mental illness and spend a lot of time wishing i could really believe in my diagnosis of schizophrenia for which i have been compulsorily treated for the last 14 years - but i do like to challenge and be challenged about my very conventional assumptions.
Hi Graham, I think it’s a great environment for talking and thinking about these things from a variety of perspectives. A tricky balancing act, but well executed in my view. - Josh
ummm.... Existential validation as a standalone approach belongs to a past era, when effective treatments for psychosis were scarce. In the context of modern psychiatry, suggesting it as an alternative to treatment risks not only being outdated but also unethical. Psychosis is a serious condition requiring evidence-based intervention, and existential validation should, at best, play a secondary and complementary role during recovery. Ignoring this reality not only compromises patient care but may indeed constitute malpractice. This might be a happening, but sounds like there were some very vulnerable people there and it should not be discussed as psychiatry in my view
I don’t think any of the presentations I reviewed suggested anything about existential validation, or replacing conventional therapies. On the contrary, all three noted the importance of engaging with conventional psychiatric approaches.
Perhaps a very good abstract summary of a very worthwhile conference. But it left me with no take-home idea that indicated how the best standard practice in current psychiatry ideas may concretely miss some important dimensions of (the experience of) madness. What it is or could be that is being missed. The penny that never dropped when occasionally encountering an idea or book (e.g Szasz, Laing, Cooper, Foucault) criticizing standard psychiatry over five decades still hasn't dropped, and I don't know whether it is because there is no penny, or because of a defect in my thinking, or priors, which prevents me from assimilating a truth which was repeatedly presented to me in a variety of forms.
Hi Andries, I think that’s fair. Although one may look at the three presentations I covered for ways in which they challenge more standard approaches to psychiatry. Although psychiatry is but one approach to madness and mental illness of course. - Josh
I read your introduction as saying the speakers had both lived experiences and were clinicians... Only to discover you were referring to a peer worker, who is not classed as a clinician here in Australia, has no AHPRA (health professional) registration... provides non-clinical services... Yet you call them a clinician??? Unfortunately this sets me up to be disappointed in the peer worker, for lacking clinical competency, rather than just appreciating the input of a peer worker, who makes their living from their lived experience. I didn't read anything that specified any of the contributors were truly clinicians - psychiatrists etc, registered health professionals at least - and I would have been fascinated if this conference genuinely was groundbreaking in its foregrounding of their experiences. They do exist, I can think of several practicing psychiatrists with lived experience of serious mental illness.
Hi Heather, Thanks again for your comment. I didn’t refer to a specific presenter who was / is both a clinician and PWLE. I don’t see where I refer to Lorna as a clinician. I think she does a great job in communicating her experiences in plain language, but also is aware of the technical jargon around her diagnoses (something no doubt helpful for peer workers). There were a number of psychiatrists who presented at this year’s conference. I too would be interested in a conference foregrounding clinicians with lived experiences of mental illness - excellent suggestion! - Josh
Just my two cents. As someone with both lived experience and enough education to have become a clinician, I ultimately opted out because psychiatry, for me, felt like a joke. The field is far too rigid and colonized for me to have ever thrived in it. That said, I can’t stand when lived experience is dismissed, as though those of us living with a diagnosis don’t have a deep, often intimate understanding of it. This is exactly why I’ve chosen to distance myself from psychiatry.
Hi Sher, Thanks for your comment. I think that’s great that you’ve found that out for yourself. I do, however, think that we have to contend with evaluations of psychiatry (psychology, philosophy, therapy, etc.) as too rigid and colonized, which would seem to exclude the freedom of thought to rethink these disciplines. I for one am hopeful and excited at the opportunity for mental health to expand beyond its current restrictions. - Josh
I’m glad to see you’re rethinking—it’s a meaningful start for the field. Many of us have already decolonized, reimagined, and rebuilt our mental health outside of psychiatry. In my opinion, the better approach is to build bridges with community mental health, leaning into shared knowledge with humility.
Hi Sher, Thanks again for your comments. I wish that I had the confidence which would allow me to say the critical work of rethinking these things has a completion! While I agree that building bridges with community mental health is the way to go, I do not think we can do this by excluding psychiatry (psychometry, psychology, etc.), which at least some people with lived experience find helpful. Nor, do I think that psychiatry need be the dominant approach to all matters mental health. - Josh
Hi Heather, Lorna here. Just to clarify, you are right -- I am not a registered health professional, although I have worked in the NHS as a peer support worker and now I advise health professionals and do qualitative research. My perspective, my outlook comes from being an artist, creative health practitioner and researcher - always guided by my lived experience of severe mental illness. Yes it would be very interesting to hear psychiatrists talk about their own lived experience of SMI.
I wish I had gone to this conference, it sounds fascinating - even us vulnerable people can be exposed to risky ideas by the way! I take a very conventional view to mental illness and spend a lot of time wishing i could really believe in my diagnosis of schizophrenia for which i have been compulsorily treated for the last 14 years - but i do like to challenge and be challenged about my very conventional assumptions.
Hi Graham, I think it’s a great environment for talking and thinking about these things from a variety of perspectives. A tricky balancing act, but well executed in my view. - Josh
ummm.... Existential validation as a standalone approach belongs to a past era, when effective treatments for psychosis were scarce. In the context of modern psychiatry, suggesting it as an alternative to treatment risks not only being outdated but also unethical. Psychosis is a serious condition requiring evidence-based intervention, and existential validation should, at best, play a secondary and complementary role during recovery. Ignoring this reality not only compromises patient care but may indeed constitute malpractice. This might be a happening, but sounds like there were some very vulnerable people there and it should not be discussed as psychiatry in my view
I don’t think any of the presentations I reviewed suggested anything about existential validation, or replacing conventional therapies. On the contrary, all three noted the importance of engaging with conventional psychiatric approaches.
Perhaps a very good abstract summary of a very worthwhile conference. But it left me with no take-home idea that indicated how the best standard practice in current psychiatry ideas may concretely miss some important dimensions of (the experience of) madness. What it is or could be that is being missed. The penny that never dropped when occasionally encountering an idea or book (e.g Szasz, Laing, Cooper, Foucault) criticizing standard psychiatry over five decades still hasn't dropped, and I don't know whether it is because there is no penny, or because of a defect in my thinking, or priors, which prevents me from assimilating a truth which was repeatedly presented to me in a variety of forms.
Hi Andries, I think that’s fair. Although one may look at the three presentations I covered for ways in which they challenge more standard approaches to psychiatry. Although psychiatry is but one approach to madness and mental illness of course. - Josh