S017: Reflections on communicating lived experience
Tracks
Track 3
| Wednesday, August 26, 2015 |
| 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM |
| Menzies Theatrette |
Speaker
Mary O'Hagan
Director
O'Hagan and McCook Weir Consulting Ltd
Making 'Madness Made Me': Reflections on communicating lived experience.
Abstract
In this workshop Mary talks about the process of writing her memoir and reads some extracts from it, making comments on her experiences, first as a service user, then as an advocate for change over the last 30 years. This follows with a group discussion on the different ways we can use and share our lived experience. Who is our audience? What is our rationale for sharing? What messages do we want to get across? What difference will our stories make? These are key questions to ask ourselves when we share our stories in public.
Biography
Mary O’Hagan was a key initiator of the mental health service user movement in New Zealand in the late 1980s, and was the first chairperson of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry between 1991 and 1995. She has been an advisor to the United Nations and the World Health Organization. Mary was a full-time Mental Health Commissioner in New Zealand between 2000 and. Mary is now an international consultant in mental health and developer of PeerZone – peer led workshops in mental health and addiction. Mary has written and spoken extensively on user and survivor perspectives in many countries, and has been an international leader in the development of the recovery approach. She is now embarking on the development of Swell - an online recovery toolkit, and has recently published a memoir called ‘Madness Made Me’, available on Amazon.
