Going beyond the norm

Anne Cooke

I’ve been a bit itinerant this year. The response to Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia, the report I edited for the British Psychological Society, has been amazing and I’ve been invited to speak about it in Washington, New York, Seville, Dublin and most recently Milan. So it was great to get an invitation to do something nearer home last month, in our local town of Tunbridge Wells.  I was part of a panel at the annual Critical Voices event. Critical Voices? To tell the truth I wasn’t totally clear about it either. It describes itself like this:

‘The space of medicine, health and wellbeing is one we all inhabit. It is at once complex, often highly technical and grounded in power, politics and debate. It is a space where we have made life changing advances. Yet it is also where we are at our most vulnerable, where our most intimate times of birth, illness, treatment, life and death are played out. Critical in every sense.  Critical Voices provides an opportunity for conversations that explore the voices in this space as we strive to bring together doctors, surgeons, psychologists, patients, carers, campaigners, researchers and academics - intertwined with the expressive insights from film, music, poetry and literature.’

As you might expect, it was a mighty interesting day.  I did a ten minute double-act with my friend and colleague Peter Kinderman, talking about our vision for the future of psychological health care when we stop dividing people into ‘normal’ and ‘mentally ill’. A video of the event is embeded below or you can watch it on Youtube here.