Greencare meets Nidotherapy

The British and Irish Group for the Study of Personality Disorder first one-day London conference in association with Growing Better Lives CIC (www.growingbetterlives.org)

This is an event to celebrate WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY 2014 - and in this it is twinned with our colleagues and friends at the HANK NUNN INSTITUTE in BANGALORE.
Click HERE for their video about the event. 

We, the organisers, also had to miss out own local event in Slough, where mental health professionals put on a fabulous concert for the town - including a staff choir and the moving solo songs of one of our own therapeutic community members.
Click HERE for a sample!

But back to the main event: a day to bring people together from different areas of personality disorder practice who all share the idea that this work cannot be isolated from its social and political context, including the idea that the greatest threat to human health in the 21st century is a truly collective one.

Beyond the Individual:

therapy using the environment.

Developing a research network.

Most research work in personality disorder has always focussed on individual service users and treatments which aim to change that person. However, other approaches are now developing that consider the impact of the environment on the individual, and the way services need to be aware of the consequences of their work for the global environment. This one-day event will bring together leaders in relevant fields to start the process of planning research and development in this ‘environmental therapy’.

Friday 10 October 2014   Roots and Shoots, Walnut Tree Walk, Kennington, London SE11 9DN

PROGRAMME

0930	Arrival and registration
1000	Rex Haigh	Welcome and introduction
1015	Fiona Lomas, Vanessa Jones, David Hare, Jan Lees, Rex Haigh (Growing Better Lives)	THE GROWING BETTER LIVES PROJECT
	‘Growing Better Lives’ is a social enterprise which has introduced formal greencare therapy groups into therapeutic community/therapeutic environment treatment programmes for borderline PD. The presentation will explain some of their trials and tribulations, describe what they do and how they work, and present some initial qualitative findings.
1100	Peter Tyrer (Imperial College, London)	NIDOTHERAPY
	Peter is the founder of BIGSPD, and a very prominent researcher in the personality disorder field. He has developed and defined the practice of ‘Nidotherapy’ which involves changing the environment rather than changing the individual. He also produces and sings in operettas, and will be selling you tickets for his next production, on Friday 14 November!
1145	Coffee break
1200	Joe Sempik (Nottingham University) & Rachel Bragg (Essex University):	GREENCARE RESEARCH TO DATE
	Joe and Rachel are longstanding and leading researchers in therapeutic horticulture, care farming and related approaches; they led the EU COST Action on the health benefits of greencare, and are co-authors of the resultant ‘Greencare: A Conceptual Framework’.
1245	Lunch and ‘market place’ networking                         Delegates are invited to bring posters and fliers and set them out around Roots and Shoots for discussion over the lunch break
1400	Susan Williams (RCPsych Centre for Quality Improvements)	ENABLING ENVIRONMENTS
	Susan is a sociologist who founded a psychospiritual community in Kent some years ago; being curious about how it worked she later completed a PhD about it, called ‘Salugenic Environments’. She is now part of the RCPsych ‘Enabling Environments’ project, and chair of the TCTC (The Consortium of Therapeutic Communities) research group.
1445	Daniel Maughan (RCPsych Research Fellow in Sustainability):	SUSTAINABLE MENTAL HEALTH
	Daniel is a psychiatrist who was appointed last year to be the RCPsych Research Fellow in Sustainability, in collaboration with the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and Warwick University. The initiative emphasises that mental health practice must be sustainable in ecological and social terms, as well as economically. He is currently chairing a high-level group producing a report with recommendations for necessary changes.
1530	Tea break
1545	All speakers	Plenary panel and discussion
	The intention of the plenary discussion is to pull together the various themes of the day and consider where collaboration is likely to be helpful, and what we all might do to develop the different aspects of ‘environmental therapy’
1625	Rex Haigh	Next steps agreed and goodbye
1630	End of conference