We Need To Talk About.... Mental Illness

29th of September 2014Five speakers share their perspective on ward design, including a new secure unit; repeatable rooms that are just about to be built; patient-led designs from the nineteenth century and an emergent new process of co-design - from space to place.

15th of September 2014Diana Rose (Professor of User Research,cKCL , Nick Hervey (retired Head of Social Care at SLaM), David Beales (artist who represents asylum and society in his work) and Sarah Wheeler (on finding religious/rural/psychiatric sanctuary) chaired by Mike Jay, author of ‘The Influencing Machine’.

24th March 2014A discussion about the personal experience of coming out of psychiatric hospital.Featuring the voices of Sarah Wheeler and Sarah Martin, from the Maudsley Hospital, who presents ideas towards the new transitional service and invites feedback from the Dragon audience.

Garry from band of Brothers, Sally Seth and Sarah from Mental Fight Club and Poetry lawyer, David Neita share views on public and personal stigmatisation of mental health issues.

27th of May 2013Doctors Khaldoon Ahmed and Louise Bundock discuss with Mental Fight Club Creative Director, Sarah Wheeler and Thomas Tobias, and the Dragon Café audience, views and reflections on psychiatric training in this, the third and final dialogue in our series of ‘Young Doctors @ the Dragon Café Dialogues’.

20th of May 2013Consultant Psichiatrist, Khaldoon Ahmed and Mental Fight Club Creative Director Sarah Wheeler and Thomas Tobias discuss with the Dragon Café audience the role in fostering (or not!) good mental health. This is Dialogue 2 of our ‘Young Doctors @ The Dragon Café Dialogues’.

13th of May 2013This was the first of our Young Doctors Dialogues in which trainee doctors Elinor Hynes and Louise Bundock discuss with the audience the role of medication and diagnosis in the relationship between doctor and client. It is introduced by Sarah Wheeler and Thomas Tobias.

8th of April 2013A discussion led by Ebony Empress, Sandra Rodney, in discussion with MFC Creative Director, Sarah and Thomas Tobias.

21st of January 2013Alex Hamel, a Canadian film maker came to the Dragon Café to show us his documentary on a Canadian psychiatric hospital. It had originally been made with teenagers in mind and was originally presented in 6 short films posted on Youtube, with the hope that it would draw young people's attention to the existence of psychiatric hospitals and draw comments on people Facebook walls etc. This emotive subject certainly drew comment at the Dragon Café and is presented here in full but with the film clips truncated as they were in French and subtitled.

We Need To Talk About….Alienation and Local Connection10th of December 2012A discussion led by Sarah and Thomas Tobias about how locality can affect our mental well being for good or ill, followed by contributions from the floor.

We Need To Talk About….All Our Southwark Stories3rd of December 2012A short talk given by Sarah and Thomas Tobias about moving to Southwark when suffering from mental illness.

5th of November 2012This week we talked about anger and mental illness, with Sarah Wheeler kicking off the discussion with a piece she had written over the weekend and then handing over to a very full Dragon Café to share experiences and ideas. And you can carry on the conversation by clickinghere and going to Dragon Connect.

29th of October 2012This discussion followed Sarah’s performance of “Remembrance of Things Past”, which commemorated her deep friendship with Heloise Osborne, how she helped Sarah through horrific periods of mental illness, and the toll that support took on her. With incredible honesty Sarah shared the lessons learned, to a great extent only after the death of Heloise, and this informs this discussion on the role of friendship. You can hear an extract from this in the podcast for the 29th of October 2012.

8th of October 2012This talk was led by Sarah Wheeler to mark World Mental Health Day, whose subject this year was “Depression – A Global Crisis”. Sarah quoted some chilling statistics – depression is the third biggest cause of global ill health today, and it is estimated that by 2030 it will be the biggest.

22nd October 2012Sarah led a discussion on psychiatric labels and imaginative metaphors for mental illness in the more intimate setting of Space One at the Dragon Café. Unfortunately we don’t have the audio of the talk but we present here the discussion that followed, with some very strong insights from Dragon patrons.

1st of October 2012This was the first in the series, We Need To Talk About…., and is a great introduction to the experience of mental illness from many different perspectives. The speakers are Dr Khaldoon Ahmed, registrar in adult psychiatry, Amy Meadows, founder of the Judy Meadows Memorial Fund, Dr Jo Allen, clinical and community psychologist, Thomas Tobias, founder of Mental Fight Club, Paul Emerson, approved mental health professional, Garry Ellison who is active in service user involvement in Southwark & Helen Shearn, arts development manager for SLaM.