The ISPS UK annual conference 2025, held in Manchester in May, invited delegates to consider the theme “Beyond Them And Us: Finding Common Ground” and to participate in a trialogue session hosted by Dr Liam MacGabhann. Brief introductory talks by ISPS UK trustees offered context from each of the three perspectives of ISPS UK members: mental health worker, family/carer, and lived experience.
Reflections from Julia MacIntosh
I introduced the lived experience context by recounting briefly my own periods of psychosis and hospitalisation. I emphasised that the most painful part of these experiences for me was to be denied my capacity as a meaning-maker. My understanding of what was happening to me throughout psychosis was dismissed and repudiated by all those around me, and instead another meaning was imposed upon me which included a pathologisation and treatment with which I still disagree.
The trialogue space was formed by inviting participants to sit in a circle and to remove our respective ‘hats’ of professional/personal identity – to instead join the circle from a position of common humanity. Other lived experience voices were heard during the trialogue session, offering their own, sometimes harrowing accounts of unwanted treatment and residual trauma. While intending the circle to provide a safe space for conflicting views to be shared, the trialogue session proved emotive and difficult – this is surely a feature of trialogue when differing perspectives are brought together. The purpose is to reach through the differences in order to arrive at anywhere beyond the differences – and the process by its very nature will be demanding.
I later attended the breakout session which considered the question “is it possible to create a mental health system that cares for us all?” In this session, lived experience testimony and the problem of iatrogenic harm were acknowledged with compassion. Many participants in this breakout group reported that their initial response to the question was optimistic and hopeful, but once they began parsing out the practical challenges set by this vision, they became discouraged and even cynical. Participants agreed with the aspirations expressed in this question but felt that the current care system as it exists made its fulfilment unlikely.
Overall, the conference programme invited us all to step outside our own perspectives and consider the views of others. We barely scratched the surface of the many conundrums and challenges bound up in the mental health care system, yet the scratch was deep enough to cause discomfort and to warrant further exploration of these issues. It was a successful first step in what might be a very demanding and at the same time rewarding journey toward common ground.