Episode 14 - Bringing about change

Michael joins Vincenzo to talk about his experience of mental health services in Scotland, over time. We discuss how services, by understanding suffering as a risk, end up caring mostly about dangerousness. This means that those in crisis are often met with a repressive approach, and those who are not considered dangerous are often met with a neglectful approach.

Sara London joins Vincenzo to disucuss her upcoming book: "The Performance Therapist and Authentic Therapeutic Identity: Coming Into Being".
We discuss why it's important in the current context, with psychotherapists having to measure themselves with a role that involves much more than just technical knowledge. We also discuss how the concepts of art and science are intertwined.
Read the book! And feel free to subscribe at the link below:

https://saralondon.substack.com/

Dr Micol Ascoli and I meet again to discuss the principles and history behind "law 180" and the Italian mental health reform, as well as its content and how it works. We discuss how it's different from UK legislation and what other systems could learn from it. Vincenzo has already introduced this topic in episode 10, so that episode is a good introduction to this one. On this occasion, Micol offers an important perspective on this, as a Psychiatrist who has knowledge of both the British and Italian mental health systems.

British and Italian Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist Micol Ascoli joins Vincenzo to talk about her experience of working in Uk mental health services, and about how we both experienced moving from a Basaglian background and system in Italy to the UK context. This conversation happens in the context of a range of mental health care scandals which have been recently in the news in the Uk. Bureaucracy is an interesting lens through which the crisis, and the system's response to it, can be understood.

Jerome joins Vincenzo to talk about his interest in ways of organising the economy that are based on cooperation. During his studies, Jerome became unsatisfied with traditional economic structures and interested in alternatives. Italian social co-operatives were a very interesting example to Jerome and this brought him to learn about Basaglia's interest in using them to build alternative system to the asylum in the community.

Take a look at Jerome's website:

econ.coop

For further information, see the page below:

https://linktr.ee/jerome.warren

Sydney Conroy, Phd student at Cambridge University, joins me to discuss how hard science, the medical model and the system's expectations affect practicing play therapy with children. We also discuss differences between her experience of the US and how the system works in the UK, and much more!

#mentalhealth #psychiatry #NHS #UK

On this episode I speak to Robert, who is on his last year of training as a Psychiatrist. It's the first time that someone with a Psychiatry background comes on the podcast, so don't miss it! We discuss a number of topics including science, the gap between theory and practice, Open Dialogue and Insulin Coma Therapy.

Ben Tuttle is the CEO of hopeguardians.com , a new organisation that offers free therapy in the UK and South Africa. In this conversation we explore the opportunities and challenges of this ambitious project.
You can find more information, and also the promotional video we talk about during the episode (highly recommended!), at the link below:

https://hopeguardians.com/

If you have any question or suggestion, don't hesitate to get in touch!

Professor Helen Spandler and Dr Sonia Soans join me to talk about the history of Asylum magazine, our thoughts on the twitter mental health debate, activism in the UK and India, Democratic Psychiatry and more...

Please subscribe to the magazine, it promotes an important platform for a constructive dialogue between different ideas that finds little space elsewhere:

www.asylummagazine.org

Steve and Sam join us (for the second time) to discuss what they learned in their experience as nurse and service user