This is a limited numbers online workshop with the aim of creating a space for interaction and discussion for participants. Free and reduced places are limited and available on a first come first served basis.

Drop the Disorder: Challenging the Culture of Psychiatric

This book is a revised and retitled second edition of A Straight Talking Introduction to Being a Mental Health Service User(2010). The Inner Compass Initiative and Withdrawal Project– provides information, resources, tools, and connecting platforms to facilitate more informed choices regarding all things “mental health”. The Power Threat Meaning Framework– Towards the identification of patterns in emotional distress, unusual experiences and troubled or troubling behaviour, as an alternative to functional psychiatric diagnosis.

Help and support

This was just what our team needed to give us the confidence to challenge the damaging ways of responding to people that have sadly become so normal. We feel fired up and ready to make a difference. So grateful for you giving us this time and opportunity Jacqui…. your passion and knowledge is so inspiring. I have been able to take so much away with me. I’d love the opportunity to hear more of your thinking. It would require significant systemic change to de-medicalise mental ‘illness’ but the authors suggest three steps that individuals can take to help reduce the use of biomedical language: 1) use everyday words, 2) emphasise the context of ‘symptoms’ and 3) use speech marks around diagnostic language. They suggest that these seemingly small acts can build up to collective action for radical change. Jo will outline the challenge to psychiatric diagnosis and Jacqui will talk about how we can best support people without colluding with mainstream diagnostic frameworks.

Home Page | Jacqui Dillon

This unique contribution to the psychology literature remains accessible through compelling narratives, poetry and artwork. This is not just a book; it is a call to action to advocate for a paradigm shift in modern mental health care. It offers an alternative framework for understanding distress and promotes hope for recovery. There’s an intruder in our house! Counselling, psychotherapy and the biomedical model of emotional distressThe Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry– CEP exists to communicate evidence of the potentially harmful effects of psychiatric drugs to the people and institutions in the UK that can make a difference. I was a 26-year-old support worker sat face to face with a recently sectioned, police-escorted patient on a mental health ICU ward. As this patient looked me in the eye with what took considerable effort to fight the level of sedation they were under, they asked me… “What can you actually do for me, how can you help me, you look like a teenager, how can you help someone of my age, how can you understand what I’ve been through?” AD4E started in 2016 when Jo Watson invited Lucy Johnstone to do a training event in Birmingham. The appetite for challenging the mainstream narrative was huge and by March 2020 we had taken our AD4E day event to 21 cities around the UK and involved many contributors in the process. Thank you for this afternoon and for the passion you brought to it. It’s made me feel more hopeful that change is possible.

Drop the Disorder – And then what?! | Jacqui Dillon

Jacqui Dillon is an activist, author, and speaker, and has lectured and published worldwide on trauma, abuse, hearing voices, psychosis, dissociation, and healing. She is a key figure in the international Hearing Voices Movement, has co-edited three books, published numerous articles and papers and is on the editorial board of the journal Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches. Jacqui is Honorary Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, Visiting Research Fellow at The Centre for Community Mental Health, Birmingham City University and a member of the Advisory Board, The Collaborating Centre for Values-Based Practice in Health and Social Care, St Catherine’s College, Oxford University. Jacqui’s survival of childhood abuse and subsequent experiences of using psychiatric services inform her work, and she is an outspoken advocate and campaigner for trauma informed approaches to madness and distress. Jacqui is part of a collective voice demanding a radical shift in the way we understand and respond to experiences currently defined as psychiatric illnesses. In 2017, Jacqui was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Psychology by the University of East London.Dr Sarah Carr, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Service User Research Enterprise, King’s College London