Empowering Minds

Episode 6 of our podcast series – Empowering Minds – is everything about the complex intersections between climate and the environmental issues, mental health and overall well-being. This time podcast host Jonas Bull is joined by three great speakers: Carys Richards is a climate activist, finishing her masters degree in Environment, Politics and Society at UCL and soon to be leading the Interlinked Campaign for Generation Climate Europe. Hannah Harrison is a second year geography undergraduate at the University of Cambridge and has recently taken over as a coordinator of the SDG Working Group at Generation Climate Europe. Cassandra Murphy is an Environmental Psychology PhD researcher at Maynooth University working on the Horizon2020 project – GoGreenRoutes. Cassie is interested in the wellbeing benefits of being connected to nature and the natural environment.

Episode 5 of our podcast series – Empowering Minds – focuses on psychiatric diagnosis, the history of diagnostic manuals and offers a human rights-based perspective on how we think about labels. Podcast host Jonas Bull is joined by three experts to talk about the understanding of psychiatric diagnoses and labels.   Dr. Lucy Johnstone is a consultant clinical psychologist. She explains how psychiatric diagnoses and manuals were established and explores other ways we can think about experiencing distress. She has worked in adult mental health settings for many years, most recently in a service in South Wales. Lea Labaki has a background in human rights and is a person with lived experience. She shares her personal experience of receiving a psychiatric diagnosis and the effect it had on her life. In August she wrote about the Belgian system of psychiatric institutions, criticising coercion in mental healthcare and institiutionalisation.  Dr. Jasna Russo is an independent scholar and a long-term activist in the international mental health service user & psychiatric survivor movement. She discusses the importance of a human rights-based approach in mental healthcare. She has worked on both survivor-controlled and collaborative research projects.

Episode 4 of our podcast series – Empowering Minds – attempts to answer the question: what is normal? And, more specifically, what is normal in the mental health experience? Podcast host Laura Marchetti is joined by four experts who help her to unpack the understanding of normality and mental health. Dr Zsófia Demjén, Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics in London explores how language influences the way we frame and understand mental (ill) health. Professor Peter Kinderman from the University of Liverpool (UK) sheds some light on how mental health and normality are approached in the medical practice. With Kees Dijkman, mental health ambassador from the Netherlands, we turn attention to the media landscape and how it translates the way mental health and mental health problems are portrayed in media. Dominique de Marné, social entrepreneur and mental health advocate from Germany talks about her own personal experience and the misconceptions around the notion of normality. We would like to say thank you to PurplePlanet.com for the music featured in this episode.

In Episode 3, Podcast host MHE Policy Manager Marie Fallon discusses the use of coercive measures in mental health services and existing solutions to end it. Marie talks to Jane Buchanan, Deputy Director for Disability Rights at Human Rights Watch and Stephanie Wooley, Board Member of Advocacy France and of the European Network of Users, ex-Users and Survivors of Psychiatry. The episode also looks into promising practices from Sweden and Greece.

For Episode 2 of our podcast series - Empowering Minds - podcast host Marcin Rodzinka talks about conflict of interests between the pharma industry and doctors with two experts, Dr Marta Piotrowska, a Polish GP and Prof. Klaus Lieb, leading academic and psychiatrist  from the Mainz University Medical Center in Germany . This podcast episode explores mental health, transparency and the relations between doctors and the pharma industry.

For Episode 1 Mental Health Europe has teamed up with OBESSU - the Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions – to produce a podcast on young people’s mental health. In this 30 minute episode we hear from Emma (picture) about her own experiences of depression and anxiety, as well as young people from Ireland, France, Germany and Finland.