13 November 1998 .. a web newsletter for psych consumers in australia

an interesting article at www.cmhc.com/perspectives/articles/art09982.htm describes incarceration of mental people in the USA.

Another consumer-type link : DATA at www.cool.icestorm.com/dat.
DATA is a group of people with direct experience of mental and emotional distress in the U.K. ... trainers, consultants and researchers who provide services to health service providers and commissioners, to social services, other voluntary organisations supporting people in distress and to MH service users and survivors. DATA is based in the north west of England ... DATA has worked with universities, with social services departments of many towns, with voluntary organisations across England including NACRO and CAB, and with national groups of CSX such as Mindlink, the United Kingdom Advocacy Network and Survivors Speak Out.

The Australian national cønsumer Network conducted its AGM in Hobart during the 1998 THEMHS conference. More info. on the Network page.

Many people cannot travel to meetings at the annual conference, and there has been discussion on the 'Net about other ways to provide representation for Aussie consumers. If you have thoughts on this issue, e-mail us.

A comment on the value of consumer-based research, compared to biophysical & scientific research. Sent in by consumer consultant and writer,
ALLAN PINCHES e-mail alpin@alphalink.com.au

<< The Mental Health Research Institute's 6th Annual John Cade Lecture (Melbourne) features Professor Thomas Barnes of the Imperial College School of Medicine, London, making a speech with the rather gratuitously pessimistic title: "WHAT MAKES SCHIZOPHRENIA SUCH A DISABLING DISORDER?"

Thanks Prof. for all the hope and prognostic optimism you hold out for us.

My dear Professor, where is your acknowledgment that a worldwide popular movement of consumers are promoting their own models of empowerment, peer support and recovery, with some success, despite -- rather than because of -- the psychiatric system?

All over the place people are getting "into recovery" through their own efforts and throwing off negative stereotyes and low expectations (that) psychiatrists long held for our futures. The labelling, the stigma and gloomy pronouncements about "incurability" of our conditions and our supposed lack of life prospects have for too many years been self-fulfilling prophecies which have disempowered us, ignored social and political causative factors, and only added to our levels of misery and disability.

Millions of dollars are being poured into biophysical "medical model" research at the illustrious Institute -- yet the best they can do is bring out a speaker who could only reinforce the sense of hopelessness and defeat surrounding Schizophrenia -- which is obviously disabling in some ways but can be impacted upon by self-help recovery efforts, peer support and attention to psychosocial and political factors. Hope is our most precious -- but also our most fragile -- resource in our journeys of healing and recovery.

Perhaps the lecture should be entitled "What Makes Being A Psychiatrist Such An (Incredibly!) Disabling Disorder." >>