Thursday 21 August 2008

Oor Mad History Update

Hi there,

I have been busy sorting through all the archive material here at the office. Interesting and dusty work! Lots of Beyond Diagnosis material, the national magazine that was a voice for people with mental health problems in Scotland during the 1990's.

I also met with Graham Morgan, who is a key person in the Lothian User Movement. Graham was involved with 'Awareness' a very early User Group in Edinburgh. He was also the first paid worker with CAPS whose role it was to set up a Lothian wide Users network. Graham was threfore invovled in LUF (Lothian Users Forum) as well as Beyond Diagnosis, SUN (Scottish Users Network) and many more such as ELIG (East Lothian Invovlement Group) and groups in West and Midlothian. It was fantastic to hear about the early days from Graham and I'd like to thank him for taking the time to talk to me. Although Graham is now based in Inverness with HUG, he has agreed to be interviewed for the oral history archive and is willing to come along to events in the future.

I am meeting with some other activists from the early days of the Movement in the next couple of weeks.

OMH has also been invited to the launch of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival in Glasgow on 10 September 2008. This is a great chance to meet with all the organisations involved and to find out about the 100 plus events that are happening across the country.

Well thats about it for now. Please get in touch if you want to find out more about OMH, if you have any old papers at home that you think might be good for the archive or you can think of any people who have been active in the User Movement that we should be speaking to. Phone Kirsten at CAPS on 0131 538 7177. Thanks.

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