the Lothians, Scotland and beyond...

"Christ yam,", he demanded, "Whit are us auld men tae dae if ye ever leave us - We're a divided frae yin anither. Kin ye no start up a Union afore ye go? Fur divided we fall."

These are the words of Archie Meek to Tommy Ritchie, both patients in Hartwoodhill Hospital in 1971. Tommy was to go on to form the Scottish Union of Mental Patients which is the first known service user/survivor group in the UK.

I found this online when searching for something else: Scotland the Brave, an article by Andy Roberts which appeared in Mental Health Today in 2009. So I thought I would link to it as it gives an account of the mental health service user movement in Scotland from the early 70s.

Andy Roberts is the Secretary of the Survivors History Group down in London. His website is full of amazing information and facts and personal accounts of survivor history.

Oor Mad History as a project is about what happened in the Lothians - but Oor Mad History as a concept is about what happened everywhere in Scotland and indeed everywhere else. What do you know about what has happened where you live? How does it connect with what has happened in other places?

Talking about Oor Mad History - whether at a big formal talk like at the Scottish Mental Health Research Network on the 23rd November or in a one-to-one conversation is - that you have to go away and think about things a bit more.

One thing which I want to talk about is why we chose oral history as a way of interviewing people rather than seeing it as a straightforward semi-structured interview.

cover of The Oral History Reader

This quote from The Oral History Reader sort of answers this for me. In the introduction, the editors say that oral history

include[s]within the historical record the experiences and perspectives of groups of people who might otherwise have been ‘hidden from history’, perhaps written about by social observers or in official documents, but only rarely preserved in personal papers or scraps of autobiographical writing.

Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, The Oral History Reader

Many people with mental health problems have written their own accounts of their experiences of distress, the responses of other people, of services, and about their recovery.

[Gail Hornstein has compiled a list of first-hand accounts of madness which you can download directly at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/assets/Academics/Hornstein_Bibliography.pdf [PDF] Gail is an American psychotherapist and academic who argues that the best way of understanding madness and mental distress is to listen to those of us who are mad and distressed.]

cover of The Christian Watts Papers

However, autobiography can be dismissed by others, by more "objective" writers. For example, Christian Watts wrote a memoir of her life which has been published as The Christian Watt Papers. She was born near Fraserburgh in a fishing community. She spent much of her life in an Aberdeen asylum.

Two historians looked at the official accounts of Christian's time in the asylum and compared the notes to her memoir. Because much of her memoir is not corroborated by the records, they struggle to reconcile the discrepancies and seem to prefer to believe the records, despite acknowledging thatperhaps the doctors had to exaggerate her condition to justify her detention. [You can see the abstract of their academic paper here:http://hpy.sagepub.com/content/17/2/205.abstract but you can't read the paper itself.]

Oral history, such as Oor Mad History, is a group history. It can bring together a range of perspectives on one subject at a particular time.

That's not to say that oral history has not also been accused of being subjective. It has, but that's a subject for another day.

UK Disability History Month

UK Disability History Month logo, yellow circle with black triangle

UK Disability History Month started this week and runs until 22 December 2010. It's the first one and we are delighted to be able to be part of it.

Their aims are to

• Celebrate our struggles and achievements as disabled people, with our allies: this could be our parents, friends, professionals, work colleagues and neighbours
• Create a greater understanding of the barriers in society that disable people. Looking at the history of how such barriers and inhuman treatment are fuelled by negative attitudes and customs, whilst recognising this as oppressive disablism.
• Develop and campaign on what needs to be changed for disabled people to achieve full equality in all areas of life
• Make equality a daily reality. The UK Government have passed the Equalities Act 2010 and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. Much has to happen to make these Rights a daily reality for the 12 million disabled children and adults in the UK.
• Recognising the multiple identities of disabled people. We want to cover the full range of impairments and link with disabled people also struggling against sexism, racism and homophobia and other forms of discrimination.

These are very similar to the aims of Oor Mad History.

I think people with mental health problems need to see ourselves as disabled people and recognise our common cause with other groups of disabled people. We are all affected in our own ways by the same thing - lack of understanding, discrimination, inequality, stereotyping...

UK Disability History Month is an ideal time to explore what we have in common and what are our differences.

What do you think these are?

Talk, talk, talk...

Sorry for not posting yesterday but we are quite busy right now. Kirsten and volunteers are beavering away at the archive. And we are preparing two talks about Oor Mad History.

The first one is at 'Doing the 'right thing': Tension between the popular, political and scientific', the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Scottish Mental Health Research Network. It's on Tuesday in Glasgow, and I am speaking in the 3.15 pm slot. The other speaker is Neil Quinn who is involved in the development of the Scottish Service User Research Network.

I am going to talk about about the service users doing research. Oor Mad History is primarily an oral history and archiving project, so I will focus on oral history. 

I will also talk about some of the other research that service users supported by CAPS have done. One is about people's experiences of detention [PDF] under the Mental Health Act. Another is about the work done by people with a diagnosis of personality disorder.

The research we do can be considered as Action Research - that is, doing the research is part of changing things. Simply put, people talk about their experiences and say what needs to be done differently. Of course, doing this is a bit more complicated!

The second talk is at the University of Edinburgh on Monday 29th November at 5pm. The Public Policy Network is holding an event called The different experiences of mental health and illness. We are still talking through the ideas for this talk so I won't tell you anymore for now. Other speakers come from backgrounds in therapy and theology, social anthropology and psychiatry. We'll all be talking about about how perceptions of mental illness has changed over time.

Both events are open to the public but you need to book - see the links for each talk for the details.

I'll be doing both talks and I tend to talk from notes as opposed to reading a prepared talk, so I won't have the full text to put up here. But I will put those notes and any slides.

History in the making...

One of the reasons Oor Mad History started was because we didn't want to forget the past. But history isn't just about the past, it is about now. We want the archive to be a living archive with new material being added all the time. We want people now to see themselves as part of a history, and their actions now are creating history.

The user movement started in the 1980s. People then didn't think that they were making history, at least I doubt they were. I think they were just busy doing what they thought needed doing. 

Almost thirty years on, we are still making history.

Spending cuts review, welfare reforms, public service cuts... it is an anxious time for most people with mental health problems, whether on benefits or not. The fear of what will happen the services and benefits that most of us need is made worse by the way the government and some of the media talk about the "workshy".

I know a lot of people who turn off the news and avoid the papers because of this.

But I know some people who are saying "right, what can we do about this?" That is history in the making. 

ashtray

In my last post I finished with a reference to smoking.

 

We put an ashtray in the exhibition because it was central to my memories of meetings of Lothian Users Forum in the 1990s:

And the other thing I remember is the amount of smoking that went on [laughter] and when sort of rules were brought, because I don’t smoke, to minimise it, that only two people could smoke at any one time could smoke or only the person who had the ashtray could smoke and people just staring at the ashtray waiting for it to become free. Even as a non smoker I wasn’t bothered, but I remember there was a really strong sense that people had to smoke, that it was their right to smoke and I don’t think could believe at the time that hospitals would become smoke free or people would have to stand outside meetings to have a smoke, you know that was kind of unthinkable at the time. I’m sure at meetings I was often the only person who didn’t smoke, but that was a big thing then.

It is strange that so few people referred to smoking in their interviews. It was a big thing, in my mind. Maybe as a non-smoker, I really noticed it.

The smoking rules came in later, in EUF days. It was contentious because of the purpose smoking served. Many people started smoking in hospital, for instance. A cigarette was a way of bonding between staff and patients, a way of relieving boredom and stress, it was part of being a mental patient.

So when people came together to talk about mental health services, people lit up, offered one another cigarettes, bonded with each other...

Do you have memories of smoking in meetings, of the debates and arguments about smoking in meetings, about the rights and wrongs of smoking bans on the wards and in day services?

typewriter

One of the exhibits was a typewriter, inspired by a couple of things that Graham Morgan told us.

…I remember I was the minute writer [of Awareness] and I had my rickety old typewriter. I’d tap away on it very, very, very badly with one finger

and talking about Margaret Temple, the first worker with the Patients Council at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital.

Yes, the very first memory… was of Margaret Temple sitting in her room, I can’t remember even what building it was… it was an office with a chair which might have been missing a leg. She either had a chair, no the chair had a leg, and the chair doubled as a table for her typewriter, or a seat for her. So if she was doing her typewriter and she’d be sitting on the floor typing it, it was a manual one, and if she wasn’t doing her typewriter she could sit on the chair.

These quotes brought me back to the days when everything was written by hand or on manual typewriters. The sound of keys being pressed very hard, the ping of the return, the copious use of tippex. A lot of the papers we have from those early days are not fully dated - 10 October was enough, but was it 1992 or 1995? A bit of detective work is needed to figure it out - who is mentioned, what were the issues?

The yellow keys on this typewriter remind of how much everyone smoked back then... but that's a post for another day.

The archive

Our book and exhibition have mostly focused (but not entirely) on the oral history but what about our archive?

It is currently (October 2010) in the CAPS basement which is not ideal - a flood could destory a lot of it and it isn't very accessible either. So we are thinking about where to keep it in the longer-term. 

It consists of all kinds of printed materials - minutes of meetings, reports, newsletters, posters, letters, bills, draft articles, expense sheets... and a lot more.

Survivors Speak Out newsletter from the 1980s

We have some non-paper based items - the t-shirts which had been on display at the exhibition, for instance. And the tulip you might be able to see to the left of the photo - that was a present from a Dutch user group, and for a while was used to show who had the right to speak at EUF meetings. 

Kirsten and Jim are the main people who have worked on the archive over the past couple of years. There is a lot involved in sorting through an archive. 

is this bit of paper worth keeping? where does it fit? what year is it from? 

Kirsten has had a lot of advice from the Lothian Health Services Archive, based at the University of Edinburgh Library, and we have been using a version of their cataloguing system. 

Despite having such a lot of paper to deal with, we are still looking for new items. We would really love to get photos, posters, personal accounts... If you have something you think might interest us, please email Kirsten at kirsten@capsadvocacy.org 

Mentioned in the Scottish Parliament

As we said in previous posts, our exhibition and book launch was opened by Malcolm Chisholm, MSP. He mentioned us in a speech he made at the Scottish Parliament on the 29th of February, on a debate on the "see me" anti-stigma campaign.

I have a particular interest in the matter this week because, on Friday, "Oor Mad History: A Community History of the Lothian Mental Health Service User Movement" is being launched in my constituency. I was honoured to be asked to write a foreword and I will speak at the launch. I am certainly aware from the work that people have done in Lothian that significant progress has been made on the wider front in relation to respecting people with mental health problems. It is appropriate to mention that and to see the see me campaign as part of a wider movement for change and improvement.

The Service User Movement in Lothians was first mentioned in the Scottish Parliament during the campaign for what we still call the new Mental Health Act: The Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act (2003) which became law in 2005. 

Exhibition

Last night we took the exhibition down. We felt quite sad - we had been so excited putting it up, and it has been wonderful to see so many people visit it, talk with them, read the comments...

We started before the exhibition with this:

then during the exhibition, it looked like this:

and last night it was back to this:

The exhibition ran from Friday 1 October to Thursday 14 October at the Drill Hall, Dalmeny Street, off Leith Walk, Edinburgh.

We shared the space with

• Much More Than A Label - art works by people who were involved with the PD work which CAPS has been working on;
• Outlook, the mental health community education project who displayed posters that students made about recovery and
• Equally Connected a mental health project for people from Black and Minority Ethnic communities.

It was part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival which runs every October and aims to help challenge attitudes towards mental health through the arts.

A book, a CD, an exhibition - what next?

The book!

After a busy summer, working on the Oor Mad History book, on the CD and on the Oor Mad History exhibition, we are back blogging.

We launched the book on the afternoon of Friday 2 October, which was the first day of the exhibition.

Over 100 people attended, a great mix of activists from all eras, allies old and new, and interested members of the public. It was so good to see so many people coming together and I got a thrill out of seeing people talking intently about the exhibition, sharing memories, and swapping ideas.

We had great speeches from Malcolm Chisholm who opened the event, Jim McGill and Kirsten MacLean.

Malcolm Chisholm is MSP for Edinburgh North and Leith and a long-term ally of the user movement in the Lothians.

Jim McGill is a long-term activist and now a volunteer interviewer, archivist and member of the steering group for Oor Mad History. He spoke about his experience with Oor Mad History and his hopes for the future.

Kirsten MacLean, community history worker, has worked tirelessly over the past 2 years on so many aspects of the project. She explained some of what we have done, and thanked a long list of people who have been involved in so many different ways in Oor Mad History.

Kirsten shows off the book

The overwhelming interest in the book and exhibition has confirmed what we have always thought - this is too good to stop. We have lots of ideas on what we want to do next. Now we need to plan for the future.

If you have ideas on what we should do, how we could do it, or want to get involved in any way, please contact Kirsten MacLean, our community history worker, at kirsten@capsadvocacy.org

You can get a copy of the book and the CD from Kirsten as well. A PDF of the book will be available on this blog soon.

Book Workshop Report

The Book Workshop on Friday 16th April went really well. We had 15 people attend throughout the day.

one of the tables all laid out ready for us to get work

Kirsten began by telling us what the day was about: read through some of the transcripts in ones or twos and mark what we thought were the best quotes using highlighters and stickers and pen - whatever suited.

Before and after, we had a discussion which I thought was very focused, affirming and inspiring. Serious points with lots of laughter.

When we were working on the transcripts, I was struck by the studious air of the room. Some of us worked on our own, heads bowed, highlighter pens dashing along the pages. Some of us worked in pairs, having quiet, intense discussions.

At lunch time, Kirsten had to drag some of us away from the hard work so that we could have soup and rolls in the café.

We finished with a big thank you to Kirsten who organised and managed the day in her usual efficient and warm manner.

ideas for the cover - we'd love to hear yours

Book workshop in April

In April, we will be holding a workshop to start working on the book. It is open to people who have been involved in the project already and to anyone interested in getting involved now.

We will read the transcripts of the interviews and highlight the most interesting quotes to go in the book.

Get in touch with Kirsten if you want to know more. Her contact details are on the left.

Last days in Toronto...

Tomorrow we fly back home. It has been a week we will never forget! Thankyou so much to David Reville and Kathryn Church for hosting us so magnificently. Also thankyou to all the many inspiring people we have met over the week.

Talking of inspiring people, let me tell you about some we have met the last two days...

On Thursday we had the privilige to meet Geoff Reaume and Mel Starkman who are responsible for the Toronto Pscychiatric Survivors Archives, the equivalent of the archive we are trying to create in Lothian. It was just so great to hear them talk about how the archive got started and the richness of the collections they have. They are currently developing a finding tool/catalogue so we will keep in touch with them and see this when it is complete.

Issues this discussion brought up for Oor Mad History were around deposit and community ownership. Also powerful for was Geoff telling us about the Wall, part of the old asylum wall built by the forced labour of patients, now a memorial to the lives of those who have been incarcerated there. Although some people would like to see the wall demolished, Geoff firmly believes it should stand as testimony to the harsh reality of psychiatric hospitals. He believes without physical actual reminders, it is easier to gloss over or sweeten difficult, painful histories. He has run 70 public tours of the wall to communicate it's story.

We then rushed off to a meeting at the Chang School of Continuing Education. David has made a short film of clips from interviews with survivors (many of whom we have met this week) on the topic of "Identity and Self Labelling". The meeting was to showcase documentary film as an example of good practice and to showcase it's potential in e-learning. We met the Dean of Ryerson University at this meeting.

After that Steve and I attended a meeting around the potential of setting up an international Mad People's History course - either developing a course in Scotland using Ryerson framework or an international e-learning course being developed by the Ryerson course constuctors.

We had a wonderful lunch on campus, where we were joined by Patricia one of the stars of Working Like Crazy. Patricia now works for the Ontario Council of Alternative Businesses.

On Friday our day started with meeting Jiji Veronka, who is Ryerson trained, a survivor, ex-street kid who now works for the Mental Welfare Commission of Canada. This talk was fascinating and gave insights into the complexities of being a survivor in this context.

Kathryn then talked to us about the exhibition she curated with two other women, "Out From Under". This was an exhibition that came out of a short course about disability and museum curation where the course participants were asked to bring along one item that represented their story. This created a very powerful exhibition of the objects and the context. The exhibition ran at the Royal Ontario Museum and they also did a lot of research with visitors to the exhibition and how they reacted to it. Kathryn has just found out that they have the go ahead to take the exhibition to Vancouver next year for the Paralympics.

We then had a debrief at Kathryn's loft, where we talked about the high points (too many to count!) of the week and action points of how we take this forward. For me there was a huge amount of learning around the archive from Mel and Geoff, also a much better understanding of David's course and how we might work towards a Mad People's History course in Lothian. I've also learnt a lot about the parallels with CAMH and the Royal Edinburgh Hospital and I believe there is potential for a lot of knowledge exchange there, in particular around peer support, survivor recruitment and survivor run organisations within the hospital, between Empowerment Council in CAMH and Patients Council in Edinburgh and very much around the reprovisioning experinces of both places.

I was delighted to be given a wonderful gift of Pat Capponi's book "Last Stop Sunnyside" - a crime novel set deep in the heart of the Toronto Survivor community. This will be a great addition to our archive.

So, it's our last night. Tomorrow we fly back. What a week! It has been such an amazing opportunity for Oor Mad History. I hope that we can continue to build on this exciting partnership and this is the start of many more conversations.

Day 4 - Inspiring Meeting with Geoff and Mel from Toronto Psychiatric Survivors Archives

Hello from Toronto! This morning we had the privilige to meet with Mel Starkman and Geoffrey Reaume who founded the Toronto Pshychiatric Archives.

It was very moving to meet them and also to talk to people involved in gathering together a history of the service user/survivor movement archive as we are.

Mel said he had the idea of an archive of the Survivor Movement back in the 1980's. Both Mel and Geoff talked about the rich collections they have within the archives and the catalogue they are working on right now. They have been given some fascinating donations.

We heard about the public events that they have held and also about the Queen Street Wall which was built by patients of the original asylum and now stands as a memorial to the histories of the people who were inpatients there. Geoff talked passionately about the wall and how they use it as a way to engage the public with the history of the survivor community. He has run around 70 tours of the wall and there is a plaque on the wall which includes a number to call for an audio version of the tour. This wall will be protected in the current reprovisioning of CAMH. Some people would like to see the wall demolished, even people within the surivivor community as it is an example of forced labour and of a time some would rather forget. Geoff argues that is must stay standing as without it the history of these people is lost, nothing is left. Also the history of mental hospitals can be "saccarined" or made sweeter (mostly by staff) and with a physical memorial like this there is no denying the exploited labour of ex-patients. This wall is a powerful testimony to history of psychiatric surivors in Toronto. It struck parallels with the current reprovisioning of the Royal Edinburgh hospital and how we honour the history of past patients within this.

Geoff and Mel also talked about the Lakeshore Cemetery project, where volunteers are restoring a cemetery of unmarked graves that was discovered near a local asylum. This also had parallels for me of the unmarked graves found near Bangour Village Hospital in West Lothian. I believe there are around 1000 graves there, and one can only wonder how many there are throughout the whole of Scotland.
This meeting was very profound for me and reinforced the importance of what we are doing at Oor Mad History.

After this meeting we went to the Wang Building of Continuing Education. There was a premier of a short film made up of the interviews David has recently done with survivor activists. This film is to be used on the online version of Mad Peoples History. The focus on this film was on "Self Labelling and Identity" and it had a tremendous response from the audience, including the Dean of Continuing Education. Steve Tilley and I then joined David and Kathryn in a meeting with Continuing Education course construction workers which was very interesting. We heard about the potential for e-learning to engage students in an innovative way, almost more successfully than in the physical classroom. We hope this is the beginning of an exciting conversation around the development of an international course on Mad People's History or a course we can develop locally in Lothian based on the model here.

At lunch we were joined by Pat who was one of the stars of Working Like Crazy. It was really great to see her. Patricia works at the Ontario Council for Alternative Businesses.

What a day!!

Mad Toronto visit - Days 2 and 3

Hi there! Well we have had another two jam packed days. There is just so much to learn here, so many parallels. Let me give you a rundown of where we have been and who we have met...

Yesterday began with attending the biggest mental health conference in Ontario. This was in a major downtown hotel and David managed to get us tickets, which ordinarily would cost $300 per day. The title of the course was "Making Gains in Mental Health" and it was a three day event. We heard Mary Walsh, a Canadian survivor and comic who was very cutting and funny. Next was the panel David was chairing on Poverty and Mental Health and Addictions. There was a panel of experts in the field including the first representative of the Canadian Medical Association, which was a big deal. Jeoff Turnball from CMA talked of poverty as a predictor of health and how it is a human rights issue. This rights issue was picked up by another panel member from Quebec who has been working on poverty legistlation. There were two representatives from Voices from the Street" who both had lived experience of mental health issues and homelessness. They talked about how poverty "steals from your soul, robs you off all good. Life becomes a daily struggle and you become a non person". He said poverty needs investment and the reivew of the system (benefits/social assistance)must be bold. He urged for more peer support and how the system does not encourage people off welfare.

One of the comments was from Becky MacFarlane, a survivor who also works at OCAB (Ontario Council fro Alternative Businesses). She said the whole system prioritises service provision, rather than including people in making the services better. She also said we need more peer support and that we need to employ survivors in organisations not jusst in a tokenistic way. Another delegate talked of the discrimination in emergency rooms/hospitals and how this needs to be a reportable offence. Another delegate talked powerfully of the First Nations experience of poverty in Canada.


We had a chance to meet a number of people and then we headed off to the Raging Spoon Cafe, a survivor run cafe, for lunch. WOW!! What a place!!! It has been redecorated since "Working Like Crazy" and is a very stylish space. We met Liz the manager and Becky her assistance. We also met Michael who runs the catering side of the business. We had a fantastic lunch there and it was just so great to be there after seeing it in the film.

After lunch David drove us to the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health (CAMH) which is the main mental health hospital in Toronto. The site is massive and is undergoing a reprovisioning (sound familiar???) They have already closed some buildings. David gave us a tour as we went past - including the original wall that was built by survivors of bricks from the old asylum. There was also two old buildings, the only remaining buildings from the asylum.

We walked through the corridors and came to the EMPOWERMENT COUNCIL office (I suppose this is the equivalent of our Patients' Councils) There we met Lucy Costa who is the SYSTEMIC advocacy worker there. We had never heard this term before, it is similar to collective advocacy in that it deals with macro rather than micro issues. I beliveve some of the issues the Empowerment Council deals with have recently been around construction a Patients Bill of RIGHTS, medication issues and a big issue at the moment is the law and judicial system. Lucy is also who set up the Mad Students Society so it was exciting to meet her. We also met by Diana Caponi (who was in Working Like Crazy, at that time she worked for The Ontario Council of Alternative Businesses) Diana now works at CAMH in HR and part of her remit is to facilitate the recruitment of survivors into CAMH. She is developing the peer suppport programme at CAMH and also was involved in the redevelopment of a major space within the hospital.

We had a fascinating talk with Lucy and Diana and also toured an exhibition in the hospital about the history of the asylum and the opening of CAMH and now the future development plans. We were also given a tour of the space Diana was involved in redevloping, The Mall, which used to be horrible canteen likened by Diana to a prison canteen. It is now an inspiring and wonderful space. There is a piece of a wooden spiral staircase saved from the old asylum mounted on the conceret wall which was very effective. There is internet access for patients (unsupervised, which was a huge coup apparantly) lovely chairs and tables and plants. There is the Out of This World Cafe which is one of the most successful survivor run businesses in Toronto. There is also a survivor run information centre which we thought was totally fantastic.

Today, Day 3, was action packed also! We were given a talk by Jen Poole (a self described "Mad prof" in Social Work) and Jenna Reid who is a Mad masters student in social work at Ryerson. They are currently doing research into the experience of mad students and have as part of a pilot project interviewed 8 students and are now at the data analysis stage. It was very interesting to hear about this.

We then went back to the Raging Spoon for lunch, again delicious. Adrienne and I then interviewed Michael, the Catering Manager about his work. This included a run down of his responsibilites, challenges in managing a team of survivors and the impact working here has had on him.

After this we hot tailed it to A-Way Express, another surivor business featured in Working Like Crazy. We were all very star struck meeting all these Mad Film Stars! We were met with very warm hospitality and had a coffee in their welcoming kitchen/lounge complete with a tank full of turtles. We were given the exciting news that since Working Like Crazy A Way are now expanding further and are wanting to move and set up another business. They are moving soon to a new building, a church with huge floor space and will set up a Gallery/Cafe and also have extended space for A-Way. This was so exciting to hear.

We were shown a new DVD made about AWay and were kindly given a copy. We were also able to ask questions about Away and were given an excellent tour of the premesis. A Way has been in operation for 22 years and we saw them at a critical point in their history, just before they move to their new premisis and begin a new chapter.

I'd just like at this stage to say a HUGE THANKYOU to everyone we have met so far, of course especially David and Kathryn, those who arranged ticket for the conference, Liz, Chelsea and Michael at The Spoon, Diana and Lucy at CAMH, Jen Poole and Jenna for their talk and Laurie, Tim, Hazel, Jim at A-Way. Phew! I hope I haven't missed someone out!

Day One - tour of Ryerson campus (complete with black squirrels!) , David's lecture

Hi! We've just had our first full day in Toronto and what a day it has been! Dr Kathryn Church met us at our hotel and took us on a tour of the neighbourhood. Ryerson University, where David and Kathryn teach, is basically a block away from our hotel so we are very close to the campus. It is a buzzing, vibrant university.

Kathryn walked us to David Reville's History of Madness lecture at Ryerson at 1pm. This was the second of two part lecture on the history of the Consumer/Survivor/Ex-patient movement in Toronto. It was very exciting to be in a classroom with this knowledge being taught. His delivery was excellent and he succinctly put across some quite complex layers of theory, anecdote, chronological history, politicising of madness and personal experience which was a powerful combination.

The first hour of the lecture was a slide show on the history of movement. Obviously we were coming in on the second part, but it was fascinating just to see how the material is transmitted to the students. So, the first half was a lecture on the theories of the movement, of user involvement, which was the lead in to a showing of Working Like Crazy as an illustration of the issues led in the first half. There is a discussion group later in the week for students to talk about issues raised in the film and also an online "blackboard" where David posts all the lecture material, a transcript of the lecture, supplementary material and he also asked them to post a comment on what they thought was the funniest part of the film.

So back to the first hour. David talked about his theory of the "six tables" as a way of looking at the survivor movement: Setting the table, turning over the tables, Getting a seat at the table, Getting tables of our own, making tables and selling them, analysing our critique. He was focusing on the last three in this lecture. He illustrated "making tables of our own" with consumer survivor initiatives/CSI's (user groups/organisations) and gave a run down of the chronology of such organisations from the Mental Patients Association in Vancouver in 1970- 1971 (very similar time to the Scottish Union of Mental Patients, 1971/2) and the Ontario Mental Patients Association in Toronto in 1977. He said that by 1988 there were only 9 groups in the whole of Canada. I could see similarities there to how we are tracking the chronlogical history of user groups/organisations in Lothian.

David talked through some examples of CSI's includin PACE (People Advocacting Change from Empowerment) which I believe offers a crisis support service and he also mentioned the survivor organisation, Sound Times. David also linked the past with the present and the future by saying how CSI's were recognised as best practice in 1997 and how he hoped the new Canadian Mental Health Commission will invest in CSI's. Currently the Commission has been set up to deal with solving the current mental health crisis and they are doing a lot of research.

David then moved on to talk about "making tables and selling them" which he illustrated by talking about survivor run businesses like the ones we see in Working Like Crazy. He talked about the history of survivor run businesses in Ontario, which goes back the Mad Market (a flea market) set up in 1981 and also businesses like the Raging Spoon Cafe and A Way couriers who we see in Working Like Crazy. He also talks about the newest business "Out of this World" cafe based at the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health. There are at the moment 11 businesses in Ontario, employing 800 survivors. This is "using the economy to build community".

David then went on to talk about the last table "Tabling our critique". He discussed LINDA MORRISSON, a survivor sociologist who wrote a book called "Talking Back to Psychiatry".
Linda also researched survivor narratives and wrote, I believe a book/paper called "Heroic Survivor Narrative". This stood out as a very interesting part of the lecture for me as it helped theorise/analyse the process of becoming an activist in the survivor movement and resonated with me from the material gathered from the Oor Mad History interviews.



David also illustrated Linda Morrison's model this with powerful comments from his own experience of forced treatment at the hands of the system. He said you quickly find out the only way to get out of hospital is to "pretend to be normal and to shut your mouth". You quickly realise you don't have power, so you act normal to get out. Then you realise it's not just you "who is being jerked around". Then from this shared experience you demand change.

He also gave the students several examples of survivor narratives, including Pat Capponi who has recently been trying to get her message out by writing crime fiction where the sleuths are mad people! Must get copies of her books!

David then led the students into Working Like Crazy, saying that the film illustrated the Six Tables. He talked a bit about the history of work placements and training in Canada for people with mental health issues and how inadequate and directionless they were. This allowed him to discuss how survivors set up alternatives - Turned over the table and created their own services. He explained how WLC is a critique of how we view mad people, and that it challenges us to see mad people as more than patients - but as people who "laugh and love and work".

I thought the lecture was fantastic. I also thought what was interesting was that it is offered as a Liberal Arts Elective, so students from all disciplines can take it. So you have students in nursing, journalism, engineering.... We had a very interesting discussion (among a million other discussions) about the pros and cons of this in the debrief session afterwards in Timothy's coffee house!

What a great day, roll on day two! I'm going to try and upload some photographs we took today, so will try to add these to the blog too. Cheers!

Canada Calling!

The big news here is that the project funding has been extended until December 2010. NHS Lothian have agreed to us developing a book with accompanying CD and also holding a big public exhibition in October 2010 to coincide with the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival. What fantastic news!!

The other big news is myself and an OMH volunteer are going on a rearch trip to Toronto next week. This will be a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn from the Canadian experience.
We will be able to see David Reville teaching his Mad Peoples' History course, we will be meeting people who were involved in the Working Like Crazy film which will include visits to the Raging Spoon Cafe and A-Way express, both survivor run businesses.

We will also be visiting the Centre for Mental Health and Addictions, discussing a fascinating exhibition "Out from Under" that Kathryn Church curated. We will be hearing presentations from a range of people, attending a major Canadian mental health conference and we will be presenting about the work OMH has done so far and what we can learn from each other and how we can take this forward.

Another thing I am very excited about is meeting the people who have been involved in archiving the user movement history in Toronto - the Toronto Psychiatric Survivors Archives. This will be a wonderful chance for me to learn how they have recorded thier rich history. Hope to come back full of inspiration!

The Rendevouz with Madness Film Festival is also on when we are there, whch should be good!
One of the group going over is involved with Theatre Workshop, who are developing a script for a film based on the Lothian user movement. Another person is keen to develop a curriculum similar to David's course to be taught here. So we are keen to do all we can to support these exciting developments.

So I will keep you updated on all the news from Canada next week.

Kirsten

Oral History Interviews

Hello, just a quick update - we are now about to start interview number 39, which is brilliant. Thanks to all that have taken part so far and to all the volunteers. We are planning to keep on interviewing until the end of October, so there is still time if you would like to take part! Please give us a call on 0131 538 7177. Thanks! Kirsten

Interviews in full swing! Thanks to everyone!

Hello.

Thanks Anne, for your update on the Oral History Society Conference. Sounds like a fantastic weekend.

Just to say that the interviews are in full swing now and going well. I'd like to say a HUGE THANKYOU to everyone that has been interviewed so far and also another HUGE THANKYOU to all the volunteers who are doing the interviews. We still have quite a few interviews to do and if you or anyone you know would like to be interviewed, please give me a call at the CAPS office on 0131 538 7177. We would be delighted to hear from you!

Also thanks to the Patient's Council for having me along the other day. Hoping to interview a few current members soon.

Jim and I also were invited to speak to Health In Mind staff in July about OMH. They have a new Service User Involvement Worker, Ben Hall who is looking at ways to increase service user involvement across Health In Mind. Thanks to them for having us along.

I think that's all the news for now...
Cheers!