The International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis has pushed back the dates for the upcoming conference in Peruga, Italy. The conference will now be taking place in September 2022. This means that the call for abstracts is currently open. If you would like to submit a proposal for a workshop, panel, or other presentation, you can do so here: https://isps2021.it/call-for-abstract/
McGill University’s Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry has published a call to action on racism and social (in)justice in mental health, which you can read here: https://www.mcgill.ca/tcpsych/network/call-action
This follows on the tail of other recent publications calling for a change in how mental health is understood, for example: the British Psychological Society’s Power Threat Meaning Framework; the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Mental Health’s recent reports, 2017-2020; Harvard’s Health and Human Rights Journal’s 2020 special issue on shifting the paradigm of mental health; and, in BC, the Carnegie Community Action Project’s 2018 report on a new vision for community-based mental health in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
The BC Hearing Voices Network stands with these calls to action. We recognize the importance of social and political context in shaping experiences of mental/emotional wellbeing and distress, as well as how these experiences are perceived and responded to. Poverty, racism, sexism and gendered violence, homelessness and housing insecurity, criminalization, displacement from ancestral territory, lack of social or legal protections, and lack of access to food, clean water, sanitation or medical care are just some of the issues that contribute to experiences of mental/emotional distress – including distressing voices and visions.
Voices and visions occur in the context of our lives, and can have different meanings and causes for different people. For some, these experiences are directly or indirectly related to experiences of trauma, injustice, discrimination, and disenfranchisement over our lifetimes. We hope to see lasting efforts to change the aspects of society that overwhelmingly create distress rather than focusing exclusively on changing individual people, which pathologizes understandable reactions to suffering and overlooks the communities we share – and which we share a responsibility to ensure are safe, just, and equal for all.
BC Hearing Voices Network 