Learning and teaching about mental health in social work.  Follow our discussions this week in Lancaster, on twitter: #mhcurr

mhhe is celebrating its ten year anniversary this year.  I've been experimenting with 'storify'.  See my efforts here: Mental Health in Higher Education: a decade of activity.  Please let me know what I have missed out!

'Viewed over history, mental health symptoms begin to look less like immutable biological facts and more like a kind of language. Someone in need of communicating his or her inchoate psychological pain has a limited vocabulary of symptoms to choose from'.  Article by Ethan Watters. 

Read in full

Using peer support workers to support the recovery of people with mental illness can add significant value to mental health services, sometimes at no extra cost, according to new research published today.

The research, which is published in two separate papers, examines the value of peer support workers in supporting recovery. Peer support workers draw on their own experiences of mental illness and support others using services in their own recovery journeys. The research examines…

The Higher Education Academy (HEA) and Health Education England (HEE) have joined forces to deliver a project which will improve training for the health workforce.

The HEA has partnered with HEE to jointly run a 12-month project to promote Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) within student training as part of HEE's 'Better Training Better Care' programme.

TEL aims to accelerate the adoption of technology to equip students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to…

Full text of the speech that launched The New Mental Health given by Mark Brown to the Asia Pacific Conference on Mental Health in Perth Western Australia on June 14th 2012.  It outlines the broad outline of The New Mental Health.

'I think one of the shifts that I’m noticing is people with mental health difficulties moving beyond seeing their identity as being defined by their interactions with services. We’re moving beyond seeing ourselves as ‘service users’…

See the Realife Learning website for information about learning resources for frontline health and social care staff. There are also some downloadable guides for managers, available on the free resources page, about how to use the booklets to address common performance issues.  May be of use in teaching on qualifying/postqualifying programmes. …

The Dementia Services Development Centre wishes to recruit an experienced post-doctoral researcher with experience in ageing/arts/health to play a key role coordinating the work of a team of researchers in England and Wales on a new research study titled ‘Dementia and Imagination’. This study is jointly funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council, through the Connected Communities Programme.…

This recent article by Phil Thomas can be found at:

http://www.the-clearing.net/madness-science-and-the-crisis-in-psychiatry/

The questions that he poses at the end may well be of use in sparking debate with students:

1. Given the problems with…

Lecture by psychiatrist & philosopher Patrick Bracken in Forum for existential psychology & therapy, at University of Copenhagen, 18/4 2012.

View it here.

Traditionally, people with learning disabilities and people with autism did not have a great time when they needed to use mental health services. The Equalities Act 2010 expects mental health services to end this discrimination by making reasonable adjustments to their ways of working.

In response, the NHS Confederation commissioned NDTi to write a report, funded by the Department of Health, showing how to ‘clarify and embed into practice reasonable adjustments for people with autism…

This resource aims to help health professionals to manage issues of confidentiality and negotiate information sharing dilemmas with families, friends and carers supporting people with mental health problems.

View the resource here.

Guardian article discusses findings of new survey.

This doctoral programme provides social care practitioners, managers, educators and policy makers with the chance to develop advanced research skills rooted in their own professional experience, in an environment that combines high academic standards with opportunities for supervised clinical social work practice. Find out more.

The Health and Care Professions Council held a consultation between 3 September 2012 and 7 December 2012 on a proposal to amend the standards of education and training (SETs) and supporting guidance to require the involvement of service users in approved programmes. Its Education and Training Committee (Committee) considered the outcomes from the consultation at its meeting on 7 March 2013.

The Committee agreed the SETs should be amended to require the involvement of service users and…

An academic who specialises in how arts activity can facilitate mental wellbeing is leading the new psychology degree course at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln.

Olivia Sagan has moved from University College London (UCL) to take up the post of Academic Co-ordinator for Psychology at BGU.

For the first time from September 2013 BGU undergraduates will be able to combine the study of psychology with another degree subject, such as drama, history or sport.

Olivia’s…

The Open Paradigm Project is dedicated to fostering the voices and perspectives that accompany changing realities and new understandings of ourselves and the world. We believe these voices – unusual, or mad as they may be – light the way the way to cultural paradigms. Societies, businesses, and families throughout history have learned from these voices, and ignored them at their peril.

We produce creative, journalistic, promotional, and educational media on behalf of those who wish to…

Mad at School explores the contested boundaries between disability, illness, and mental illness in the setting of U.S. higher education. Much of the research and teaching within disability studies assumes a disabled body but a rational and energetic (an "agile") mind. In Mad at School , scholar and disabilities activist Margaret Price asks: How might our education practices change if we understood disability to incorporate the disabled…