ILMI / A Disorder For Everyone (AD4E) joint event - 15 March

Invitation to an event between ILMI and AD4E (A Disorder For Everyone) which is taking place on Zoom on Monday, 15 March at 2pm. To register email info@ilmi.ie

Independent Living Movement Ireland (ILMI) is a cross-impairment DPO (Disabled Persons Organisation) and all of our work is informed through an equality, human rights and social model of disability lens.

The social model is based on the view that barriers are caused by society, rather than by a person’s impairments or diagnostic labels. We also reject a medical view of disability which always focuses on people’s impairments from a medical perspective, including “mental health” diagnostic impairment labels. In some ways, the medical model still looks at what is ‘wrong’ with the person and not what the person needs

ILMI is keen to ensure that the voices of people all people who with lived experience of emotional distress, trauma and madness (including psychiatric survivors) are involved to ensure that ILMI as a cross-impairment DPO is fully inclusive.

On 15 March , ILMI are delighted to co-host an online seminar with AD4E (A Disorder For Everyone), featuring guest inputs from Jo Watson and Dr James Davies.

AD4E shares ILMI’s vision that emotional distress is caused by what is experienced and largely rooted in social factors and challenging psychiatric / medical diagnosis of distress. ILMI is delighted to work in partnership with AD4E and to listen and learn from their work in the UK and beyond.

ILMI’s aim for the event is to begin to explore and create a social-model of disability framework challenging discussions that individualise or disempower people with lived experience which are predominantly led by medical approaches to emotional distress and madness.

The ILMI / AD4E event in March can bring people who share similar values and look to explore shared language which is based on empowerment, rights, autonomy, choice and control for people who are experiencing or have experienced issues relating to emotional distress / “mental health”.

This event is for people with lived experience, disabled activists and allies who wish to explore a deeper understanding of emotional distress and building a shared analysis of emotional distress through the social model of disability.

 To register email info@ilmi.ie

About the Speakers

Jo Watson

Jo Watson is a psychotherapist, trainer, speaker and activist. Her activism is motivated by a belief that emotional distress is caused by what is experienced and largely rooted in social factors. Jo founded the Facebook group ‘Drop The Disorder!’ in September 2016. She  is part of the Mad in The UK team www.madintheuk.com and the editor of the PCCS Books publications Drop the Disorder! Challenging the Culture of Psychiatric Diagnosis and We are the Change-Makers; Poems supporting Drop the Disorder.

Jo is the organiser of the A Disorder For Everyone events www.adisorder4everyone.com and can be found on Twitter @dropthedisorder   

Dr James Davies

Dr James Davies graduated from the University of Oxford in 2006 with a PhD in social and medical anthropology. He is now a Reader in social anthropology and mental health at the University of Roehampton.

James is also a psychotherapist, who started working for the NHS in 2004. He is the co-founder of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry (CEP), which is secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence.

James is the author of the bestselling book Cracked, which was his first book written for a wider audience. It is a critical exploration of modern-day psychiatry based on interviews with leaders of the profession.

Other than Cracked, James has published four academic books with presses such as Stanford University Press, Karnac Press, Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge. James has spoken about his research internationally, including at the universities of Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Brown, UCL, Oslo, Columbia (New York), The New School (New York), and CUNY Graduate Centre (New York).

James has also written for the media. His articles have appeared in The Times, The New Scientist, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Therapy Today, Mad in America and Salon. He has spoken on BBC Radio 4 (The Today Programme & PM), Sky News, BBC World News, BBC World Service, LBC, ITV’s This Morning , News night and various national and local radio stations. He has also extensively consulted for the BBC. ITV. and other media outlets on matters pertaining to mental health.

Books include:

Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good

Why is psychiatry such big business? Why are so many psychiatric drugs prescribed – 47 million antidepressant prescriptions in the UK alone last year – and why, without solid scientific justification, has the number of mental disorders risen from 106 in 1952 to 374 today?

The Importance of Suffering

In The Importance of Suffering: The Value and Meaning of Emotional Discontent James Davies considers emotional suffering as part and parcel of what it means to live and develop as a human being, rather than as a mental health problem requiring only psychiatric, antidepressant or cognitive treatment. This book therefore offers a new perspective on emotional discontent and discusses how we can engage with it clinically, personally and socially to uncover its productive value.

Emotions in the Field

As emotion is often linked with irrationality, it’s no surprise researchers tend to under report the emotions they experience in the field. Emotions in the Field explores the idea that emotion is not antithetical to thought or reason, but is instead an untapped source of insight that can complement more traditional methods of anthropological research.

The Making of Psychotherapists

Here, for the first time, is a book that submits the psychoanalytic training institute to deep anthropological scrutiny. It expertly uncovers the hidden institutional devices used to transform trainees into professionals. By attending closely to what trainees feel, do, and think as they struggle towards professional status, it exposes the often subtle but deeply penetrating effects psychoanalytic training has upon all who pass through it; effects that profoundly shape not only therapists (professionally and personally), but also the community itself.