Festival of Ideas: "Mental Health for All"

CGHH is honoured to support this upcoming Festival of Ideas talk, 'Mental Health for All.' This event will take the form of a series of talks exploring the nature and scale of the public mental health challenges across the globe and the best ways of addressing them. How can better social and cultural environments that will foster happier and more effective societies be constructed? There will be the opportunity for relevant audience questions.

The talks include:

• The Problem of Chronic Mental Illness
  Andrew Scull discusses the abandonment of the Victorian ‘museums of madness’, and their replacement by what he says is euphemistically called ‘community care’. Are we are no closer than our 19th-century ancestors to solving the problem of how to address the needs of those suffering from serious forms of mental illness?
  
  
• The Place of Psychotherapy in Contemporary Societies
  In many countries psychotherapy is being rolled out and promoted as a prime means of improving mental health and well-being. But what is psychotherapy? Suspended between science, medicine, religion, art and philosophy, the advent of modern psychotherapies represents one of the distinctive features of 20th-century Western societies. Yet their historical study lags behind their societal impact. Sonu Shamdasani explores the ways in which these practices have, and continue to shape, contemporary notions of psychological disorder, well-being and identity itself.
  
  
• Mental Health Services That Don’t Burn Out the Providers
  Psychological therapies - like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) - are increasingly central to the treatment of mental health issues within the NHS. Martyn Pickersgill will argue that the wellbeing of health professionals is key to securing ‘mental health for all’ – yet, it is a surprisingly neglected issue. Join Martyn as he explores how mental health interventions can be funded, planned and delivered in fair and equitable ways.

• Achieving Equality for Mental Health
  Norman Lamb MP will explore how to achieve equality for those suffering mental ill health, with a focus on waiting times, preventative care and improving quality of care.

You can book tickets to this event through Eventbrite- a link is available on the Festival of Ideas website. 

You can find Tempest Anderson Hall in the Yorkshire Museum, Museum Gardens. A map is available here. 

About the speakers

Andrew Scull was educated at Balliol College Oxford and at Princeton University. He is past president of the Society for the Social History of Medicine and has written extensively on the history of psychiatry. His most recent book, Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine, was published by Thames and Hudson in 2015 to great acclaim, and will be issued in paperback later this year.

Professor Sonu Shamdasani is the Vice-Dean (International) of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at University College London (UCL), and the Co-Director of the UCL Health Humanities Centre.

Dr Martyn Pickersgill is Wellcome Trust Reader in Social Studies of Biomedicine in Edinburgh Medical School. He works across the health-related social sciences and medical humanities, and is particularly interested in the sociologies of neuroscience and mental health. Martyn has held grants and fellowships from sponsors such as the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Leverhulme Trust and Newby Trust. He is the recipient of a Wellcome Trust University Award, and recently received the Henry Duncan Medal from the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Norman Lamb has been the Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk since 2001. He was appointed Minister of State for Care and Support at the Department of Health in September 2012 and served in this position until the end of the Coalition Government in May 2015.  As Health Minister, Norman worked to reform the broken care system and led the drive to integrate health and care, with a greater focus on preventing ill health. He also challenged the NHS to ensure that mental health was treated with the same priority as physical health, with access waiting standards being introduced this year.

CGHH is very pleased to note that there are so many other interesting events happening across the Festival. We will highlight relevant talks and exhibitions in the interest of the public, and in hopes of the broadest possible participation in all events in the Festival of Ideas. Please look out for further information through this website and social media.