Conference
Social Change 2023 · A new way of thinking about mental health
Friday 28 April 2023 at Hilton Reykjavík Nordica
- 8:30
Registration and coffee
- 9:00
Moderator opens
Steinunn Ólína Þorsteinsdóttir
- 9:05
Formal opening
Sigríður Gísladóttir, Chairman of the board of Geðhjálp
- 9:15
The Sedations of Nations: The underlying reasons why our mental health systems are failing
Dr. James Davies
In this presentation, Dr. James Davies calls for major social and economic reform to tackle the crisis in poor mental health outcomes, revealing the political, corporate and economic motives behind the promotion of the medical model, which depoliticises, individualises, commodifies and pathologises our emotional distress – a model, while handsomely serving neoliberal aims and objectives, has presided over decades of worsening clinical outcomes.
- 10:15
Break
- 10:30
How and why the medicine free unit was developed within the Norwegian health care system
Magnus Hald
Experiences from running a drug-free treatment program for people with psychotic disorders in Tromsø, Norway. How the treatment unit was developed within the Norwegian health care system; the context for this development, why drug free treatment, the mandate for the establishment, organizing principles, the medication-free program, and what has been achieved.
- 11:20
User input – video
- 11:25
Psychiatry and its discontents
Andrew Scull
An examination of American psychiatry from its origins to the present, looking at the rise of the asylum era, the growth of degeneration theory and its consequences, the period of uncontrolled therapeutic experimentation that marked the period from 1915 to the mid fifties, the psychopharmacological “revolution” and its limitations, the collapse of the asylum system and the failure of the much trumpeted genetic and neuroscientific programs to yield anything of clinical relevance.
- 12:25
User input – video
- 12:30
Overview from the workshops
Ann Mari Lofthus and Nína Eck
- 13:00
Lunch and networking
- 14:00
User input – video
- 14:05
Intentional Peer Support: A relational approach
Lisa Archibald, Chris Hansen and Amanda Francis
Intentional Peer Support provides a powerful framework for creating relationships where both people learn and grow together. We offer a range of trainings to examine and practice what is necessary to build mutual support. IPS is used across the world in community, peer support, and human services settings, and is a tool for community development with broad appeal to people from all walks of life.
- 15:05
User input – video
- 15:10
The case for a radical paradigm shift in the psychiatric care
Robert Whitaker
In 1980, when the American Psychiatric Association published the third edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, it adopted a “disease” model for categorizing and treating mental disorders. That model was then promoted around the world. Today, the results from that model are in. The model has proven to be scientifically bankrupt and it has produced a public health disaster. We need a new narrative to govern psychiatric care, and a review of the past provides a key for creating that future: Think of those who suffer as “brethren,” and humanistic care that has been shown to help people get well will follow.
- 16:00
Closure
Guðmundur Ingi Guðbrandsson, Minister of Social Affairs and the Labour Market