Mental health charity Meeting for Minds (M4M) is bringing together experts from around the world to help solve a problem that has confounded psychologists: why, after 50 years of scientific research, has there been little significant improvement in the effectiveness of treatments and therapies for many people with severe mental illness?
Meeting for Minds is trying a new approach to the problem with the forum, which will bring the knowledge and experience of people living with mental illness and their carers to the table with scientists and clinicians to inspire innovation.
Meeting for Minds director and former Western Australian health minister Keith Wilson, who is a family carer for his son who experiences persistent symptoms of schizophrenia, said that new ways of thinking, leading to better treatments and therapies, were desperately needed.
“Listening to people with lived experience is crucial to moving forward”, he said.
“People with mental illness and their carers are a huge part of the solution and, together with researchers in this area, they can and should be an integral part of the research process.”
He said the Meeting for Minds approach is already showing promise in a ground-breaking study based on links between the body’s immune system and serious mental illness.
Leading Australian psychiatrist Professor Ian Hickie of the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney will present the early findings of the Immune Therapy Research Project at Meeting for Minds’s forum to be held in Fremantle on May 27.
The study, which came out of a Meeting for Minds forum in 2014, is helping young people with severe psychotic and mood disorders who do not respond to conventional medical treatment.
It is being driven by a collaboration between clinicians, researchers, young people and their parents, with the first stage of the project funded by the charity.
The M4M SYNERGIES Forum will gather experts from across Australia and around the world to present their ideas and experiences of how clinicians, researchers, people with mental illness and carers can work together in the quest for improved outcomes.
National Mental Health Commissioner Jackie Crowe will speak about the importance of “Focusing on our collective wisdom - together - to find solutions that change lives.”
She will draw on her work with researchers, clinicians and organisations to advance brain research through collaboration.
Ms Crowe is in the unique position of having deep insight and understanding of mental health and mental illness derived from her own struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, her husband’s bipolar disorder, many years of working both in and with mental health organisations, and knowledge of high-level strategic policy.
Kris Harold of LinkPADD will speak about a mental fitness measure for the transport and mining industry that he is developing in collaboration with Meeting for Minds and the WA Institute of Neuroscience.
His work illustrates how brain science can make a practical contribution to better mental health in potentially hazardous workplaces and occupations and aid the development of objectively assessable health and safety management practice.
The forum program also includes:
- Forum MC Ms Jane Caro, Author, Social Commentator and Advertising Writer
- Dr Michelle Banfield, Australian National University, Canberra
- Mr Simon Denegri, National Institute for Health Research and INVOLVE, UK
- Dr Anne Marie Engel, Lundbeck Foundation, Denmark
- Dr Per Hamid Ghatan, Karolinska Institute, Sweden
- Professor Ilana Kremer, Mazor (Mazra) Mental Health Center, Israel
- Ms Anne McKenzie, Telethon Kids Institute and University of Western Australia
“This Forum will bring together participants from a wide range of perspectives, and is vital in helping to drive M4M’s goal of ensuring that people with lived experience of mental illness become accepted and integral partners in future research,” Meeting for Minds founder Maria Halphen said.
The M4M Forum will take place in a specially created space at B-Shed, Victoria Quay, Fremantle.
It will be followed by a one-day public event on May 28 – spectrum – which will complement the forum, offering a variety of activities aimed at enhancing wellbeing including visual art, poetry, film, dance, meditation and yoga.
For further information about M4M SYNERGIES Forum go to meetingforminds.com
For further information about spectrum go to spectrumevent.com.au