Break-through!

international | education | news report

Sunday October 03, 2010 21:36

by Sean Crudden - impero

Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth

0879739945

A New Paradigm?

I travelled by Malev Airlines through Budapest from Dublin Airport to Thessaloniki on Tuesday for the first assembly in 6 years of ENUSP (European Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry). A conference; workshops; an election of a new board representative of all the regions of Europe; and an open air concert in Aristotle Square, the principal civic square in Thessaloniki, on Thursday night at the end of the conference. The theme of the conference was the future for users and survivors. The motto of the concert was Stop Psychiatric Violence. I reversed my journey on Friday evening reaching Jenkinstown at 23.55.

I was the sole Irish representative at the conference although there were several representatives of Mind the British advocacy outfit and they insisted the title of their country was Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I told them I did not care what they called themselves but that I considered myself representative of all of Ireland.

There were representatives there from Czech, Latvia, Greece, Portugal, Russia, France, Italy, Spain, Georgia (home to Joseph Djugashvili), Israel, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Serbia, England, Germany, Spain. And I don't think that that is an exhaustive list. The conference took place in and around the main assembly hall of Aristotle University. The psychology department of the university took care of all the arrangements, accomodation, travel, food, entertainment.

I was impressed by the leader of the Greek delegation. Listening to simultaneous translation (by a young female student) through headphones I gather he thought that a psychiatric diagnosis wrecks one's life; the drugs are poison; psychiatry is over-rated.

At the end of the conference during the closing ceremony one of the academics referred to psychiatry as a scientific monologue. A failed paradigm built by careerists on the bodies of sensitive people.

In the public square that night a banner declaring, "Stop the psychiatric violence!" was slug across the apron of the stage dominating the city square, films of violent psychiatric intervention were blazed across an outdoor screen. A heavy wall constructed of cardboard boxes displaying the logos of all the prominent global pharmaceutical companies was unveiled. At a signal users and survivors rushed the wall, demolished it, kicked it asunder; with shouts of triumph. The music and singing was of a quality to be found no-where else in this small globe except Greece. Users and survivors danced and jived in the square for over an hour. The square is bounded on three sides by impressive buildings and on the fourth side (behind the stage) by the Aegean Sea.

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ENUSP General Assembly

Sat Aug 23, 2014 14:43

The fist general assembly of The European Network of Users and Survivor of Psychiatry since Thessaloniki is slated for the final week of November 2014 in Copenhagen.

In the first place evidence is scarce on the subject of how mental patients have fared comparatively since Thessaloniki. My opinion is that the position of the mental patient is now profoundly worse. But then I am merely a glazed zombie with a heightened sense of uncertainty.

The state of advocacy on behalf of mental patients in Ireland is discouraging and depressing. There has been a plethora of initiatives in this field all backed by state money. But the voices I hear are very conventional and very conservative as befits people who are within the sphere of influence of the state which supports psychiatry without doubt or question.

Anyway ENUSP is currently reviewing its membership lists in preparation for the General Assembly. I would welcome contact from user survivor organisations in Ireland however small but which are bona fide advocates and who wish to be associated with ENUSP.

I am writing about these matters from a sense of responsibility. I am secretary of IMPERO and vice-chairperson of ENUSP.

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