The SSNS's 23rd Annual Conference

Registration is Open!

Friday, November 4th, 2011

8:45 am to 4:30 pm

The University Club

Dalhousie University

1 Alumni Crescent

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Topics to be covered:

• Cognitive remediation for schizophrenia - Dr. Susan R. McGurk, Department of Psychiatry, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, New Hampshire

• An interactive session about antipsychotics and their side effects - Dr. David Gardner, Department of Psychiatry & College of Pharmacy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

• Peer support - Vince Daigle, Healthy Minds Cooperative, Halifax, Nova Scotia

• Psychosocial rehabilitation - The Beacon Program, Kentville, Nova Scotia

• Cognitive behavioural therapy and how it can help with relationships

• Employment - Gail Kelly, Connections Halifax, and staff of The Mindful Mango

• Promoting recovery through a Wellness Program - Dr. Zenovia Ursuliak, Nova Scotia Early Psychosis Program and the Department of Psychiatry, Dalhousie University

Registration fees (includes lunch and two refreshment breaks)

Secure online conference registration is available by clicking here

Regular: $150

SSNS Member: $100

Student: $50

Un-Waged: $25

All-day parking passes are available for $10.

To download a mail-in conference Registration Form, please click here.

Ten conference bursaries are available for individuals who live with mental illness.

To become a member of the Schizophrenia Society of Nova Scotia, please complete and mail in the Membership Form available by clicking here, along with a minimum tax-deductible donation of $15.00.

The chickadee was chosen to represent the theme of recovery because chickadees are friendly, hardy little birds that thrive in good times and bad. The bird is shown looking up to convey a feeling of hope.

Designer: Terri Vernon, SSNS member

Conference Sponsors

Please click on the sponsor's logos to visit their websites.

Nova Scotia Housing & Homelessness Network - First Annual Provincial Housing Conference

Tuesday & Wednesday, November 22nd & 23rd!

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From an email received from the Nova Scotia Housing & Homelessness Network on August 4th:

Theme: Fast Forward

The Conference will be an opportunity to strengthen the non-profit, private and public housing sectors by bringing together leaders from across the Atlantic Provinces. This event will be a leading regional resource, attracting a full spectrum of people living in and working within the affordable housing industry - people who are committed to advancing what Nova Scotians have asked for in their communities – safe and affordable housing.

Beginning on Tuesday, November 22nd, National Housing Day, the programme will include:

• Launch of the Nova Scotia Housing & Homelessness Network

• Plenary Session

• Keynote Speakers

• “Meet the Dragons” - bring your development project ideas to our expert ‘Dragons’ panel for qualified expert advice

• Open Space workshops

• Award Luncheon and Dinner

• Book Launch

Further programme details will be posted as they become available.

Who should attend?

Everyone involved in the housing industry, particularly builders and developers, finance specialists, policy-makers, municipal, provincial and federal government representatives, both elected and appointed, as well as those involved in community grassroots efforts to promote affordable housing:

• Architects and HRM city planners

• Housing authorities

• Affordable energy associations

• Neighbourhoodgroups

• Affordable housing advocates

• Professional associations

• Public agencies

• Service and shelter providers

• Sustainable development experts

• Tenants/subsidized housing consumers

Sponsors/Partners:

Canadian Mortgage and Housing Cooperation (CMHC)

Conference Program Planning Committee

• Network Steering Committee

• email the Committee

Peer support: what is it and what makes it different?

An article posted July 4th on the Scottish Recovery Network (SRN) website:

In a specially commissioned article for SRN, international author, trainer and peer support expert Shery Mead [pictured] talks about some of the distinct features of the peer relationship and considers implications for practice. Shery is the keynote speaker at the forthcoming Experts by Experience conference being held in Perth on 21st September 2011.

Peer support is becoming an established practice in mental health. It is being used in informal settings as well as in hospitals and other services. But what is it about peer relationships that make them different to just having a good friend or for that matter another service worker? I will talk in this article about some of the distinct features of the role of peer support and implications for practice.

Peer Support is not new. As long as there have been people on earth, they have come together around shared experience to learn from each other. In mental health we have added a more formal layer to peer support by making it a specific role that is often paid. This is where it may get confusing. In paid peer support you and I come together to learn from each other (like some friendships) but you (the paid peer support worker) actually need to practice a few things.

After many years’ experience working and writing in the field of peer support, I’ve produced the following guide for prospective and active peer workers to some of the core principles of peer support practice:

1. Learning vs Help

In the best of all worlds we are altruistic, compassionate beings. We don’t like to see others suffering or in pain, and we want to make a difference. All too often, however, these beliefs and desires get in the way of building deeper understanding between people and can actually thwart learning and growth. When we go into a relationship with the intention of helping or even assisting or supporting we go in with some kind of agenda about you and your “problems.” Perhaps I know a little bit about you from some of my colleagues and before I’ve even met you I decide who you are and what you need. Even if I don’t know anything about you, when my attention is focused on helping we may well end up in a power struggle.

Instead, most people hope that we’ll learn more about them and how they’ve learned to make sense of their experience, learn about the cultural conditions that maintain their reality, and most importantly, what their ideas are about what might make a difference. Then – and only then – are they willing to understand or listen to where we’re coming from. Learning together takes time; it’s about building relationships where new information and new knowledge can emerge.

2. Focusing on the relationship vs. focusing on the individual

Paying attention to the relationship is an altogether different phenomenon. It’s a bit like a dance or a jazz band where the sum of the parts is greater than all the individuals added together. It is not about playing the right notes (saying the right thing), it’s actually being fully present to the other (listening for the story, the context of the story, what’s unspoken in terms of feelings and meaning) and then responding not with the answers but intuitively, creatively bringing something that is both authentically you AND that is also from the place where you connect with the other person to the conversation. This flow of increased mutual understanding, as well as generation of new meaning, is the goal of peer support. And so we seek to discover what goes into building this type of conversation.

One of the keys is giving up the idea of pre-determined outcomes (such as goals or symptom-reduction) and instead, learning to think laterally about the quality of our relationship. For example, instead of trying to persuade, seeking to understand, reflecting on our responses, and then speaking authentically from the heart what seems most important to us to contribute.

3. Responding out of hope vs. reacting out of fear

Let’s face it, when we feel frightened we do whatever we know how to alleviate the fear or the discomfort. We even go so far as to try to prevent situations that might potentially be uncomfortable. In peer support, as in the rest of community, this translates into coercion – subtle or otherwise.

Fear reactions come in all forms -- from avoiding, persuading, and knowing what’s best, to controlling, assessing and force. These reactions are hardwired by our animal instincts as well as from cultural norms that reinforce difference as dangerous (e.g. people from cultures different from our own). Fear has even influenced how we think about safety and has left us anxious about what’s not safe rather than comfortable with creating our own sense of safety.

This is where the idea of hope comes in. In order to sit with the discomfort of a difficult situation we must have some hope that something interesting or even positive will come out of going right through the middle of it. We may not know what that is (trying to control the outcome would be a fear based response) but gradually begin to trust that there is learning in our discomfort. This learning then creates possibilities that give us options – options that didn’t exist when our goal was just to get through this frightening time.

While these principles are just a basic outline of what peer support might encompass, they give us a chance to reflect on what factors contribute to making it unique. As we build these skills across a paid workforce of peers we actually increase our ability to self reflect on all our relationships and what makes them work. In doing this we’re working towards social change. Maybe, at the end of that day, that is a role for peer support.

Find out more about the Experts by Experience conference, including how to register.

Find out more about SRN's work on peer support.

Also see:

Defining Peer Support

Largest effort to find gene-environment interactions underlying schizophrenia risk

An article posted on July 16th by news-medical.net:

At the 23rd ECNP Congress 2010 in Amsterdam, Professor Dr. Jim van Os, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology at Maastricht University Medical Centre, The Netherlands, will present the EU-GEI project, involving more than 7,500 patients and their families, which brings together a multidisciplinary research team from 15 countries in the largest effort to date to find gene-environment interactions underlying schizophrenia risk. In particular, he will explain the development of tools that will make it possible to monitor, and possibly modify, vulnerability at the behavioural level, thus preventing transition to overt illness.

Schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders are the most mysterious and costliest of mental disorders in terms of human suffering and societal expenditure, representing a major challenge to scientists. Until recently, researchers had relatively few starting points in trying to unravel the causes of psychosis and to identify better treatments. While epidemiological research has characterised powerful environmental effects on schizophrenia risk, twin and family studies have established that more than half of the vulnerability for schizophrenia is of genetic origin. However, despite enormous investments, it has proven extremely difficult to identify molecular genetic variants underlying schizophrenia liability. According to the model of gene-environment interaction, genes influencing schizophrenia risk may do so indirectly by making individuals more sensitive to the effects of causal environmental risk factors (e.g. urbanisation, migration, cannabis use, childhood trauma). Now, for the first time, a focused scientific collaboration has been organised in Europe in order to elucidate the causes of schizophrenia, focussing on both genes and environments in the same research project.

Image credit

Call for Abstracts: 2010 Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention Conference

An email received by the SSNS on March 31st:

The Canadian Mental Health Association – NS Division & NS Department of Health Promotion & Protection, hosts of the 2010 Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention Conference: Communities Addressing Suicide Together, are pleased to announce that the Call for Abstracts is now open!

We invite communities, survivors, community-based practitioners, clinicians, researchers and policy-makers to submit an abstract that focuses on innovative and promising practice in addressing suicide. The guidelines and submission form for the Call for Abstracts are available on the conference website at www.suicideprevention.ca/2010.

The conference will take place at the Alderney Landing Cultural Convention Centre on the Dartmouth waterfront in Halifax, Nova Scotia from October 5-7, 2010. Registration will open on Tuesday, April 6, 2010. Please note that seats are limited – we encourage you to register early!

Looking forward to seeing you in Nova Scotia!

Angela Davis & Julian Young
Conference Co-Chairs

1-877-466-6606
Casp2010@eastlink.ca

Conference: Youth Mental Health and the Justice System

Please click on the image to magnify it.

For further information, please click here.

News from the Lunenburg County Chapter of the SSNS

The winners of the Lunenburg County Chapter of the SSNS's raffle at the SSNS's 20th Annual Conference were:

First Prize - The Heron a.k.a. Big Bird handcrafted by Jim Smith of Bridgewater. Won by Lisa P.

Second Prize - a painting donated by Jane Whitfield Smith of Bridgewater. Won by Margaret Burton.


Click on the photographs below to enlarge them.

Assisted by Denton Conrad (left), past-president of the Lunenburg County Chapter of the Schizophrenia Society of Nova Scotia (LCC-SSNS), Stephen Ayer, executive director of the Schizophrenia Society of Nova Scotia, draws the names of the winners of the raffle.


Denton Conrad (left) presents the painting donated by Jane Whitfield Smith to Second-Prize Winner Margaret Burton.


Gail Corkum, Richard Balser, and Jan House (left to right) volunteering at the LCC-SSNS's display booth during the SSNS's 20th Annual Conference held in Halifax on May 30th, 2008.


Gail Corkum (left) and Richard Balser volunteering at the LCC-SSNS's display booth (with Big Bird in the foreground!).

The SSNS’s 20th Annual Conference - Held Friday, May 30th, 2008

Families as Partners in Mental Health Care

Plenary Speaker

Dr. Gráinne Fadden, Director of Meriden, the West Midlands Family Programme, UK

Developing Effective Partnerships with Families - Benefits and Challenges

To view Dr. Fadden's PowerPoint presentation, please click here (PDF).




Cyril Allan (right), president of the Schizophrenia Society of Nova Scotia, with Dr. Gráinne Fadden (please click on the photograph to enlarge it).

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Pamela Forsythe, President, Schizophrenia Society of Canada

"Prejudiced, who me? Are the attitudes of health care professionals contributing to stigma about schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses?"

To view Dr. Forsythe's PowerPoint presentation, please click here (PDF).

Additional Presentations

Ms. Jane Gillis, Pharm.D., Manager, Pharmacare Business Solutions, Nova Scotia Department of Health. An Overview of the Nova Scotia Family Pharmacare Program.

To view Dr. Gillis' PowerPoint presentation, please click here (PDF).

Ms. Patricia Murphy Cosgrove, MSW, RSW, Clinical Social Worker, Nova Scotia Early Psychosis Program. Families: PARTNERS IN RECOVERY (Not Just Rhetoric).

To view Ms. Murphy Cosgrove's PowerPoint presentation, please click here (PDF).

To view the PowerPoint presentation on Vincent van Gogh, please click here (PowerPoint file).


Conference Organizing Committee

Dr. Stephen Ayer, Executive Director, SSNS
Ms. Dachia Joudrey, Vice-President, SSNS


The Conference Brochure is available by clicking here (PDF).



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The 7th Annual Psychiatrists in Blue Conference

Psychiatrists in Blue: Addressing the complexity of mental illness

The 2008 Conference will be held Sunday, November 2nd, to Tuesday, November 4th, 2008, in Edmonton, Alberta.

Call for Presentations...

In Adobe PDF format

In Microsoft Word format

Submission deadline for presentations is June 1st, 2008.

From Innovations to Practice

A State of the Science Conference

Monday, April 14 & Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Hyatt Regency Hotel
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

A posting from the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, Boston University:

This state of the science conference brings together participants from the USA, Canada and an estimated 25 nations into an exciting learning community, integrating research, practice and innovations.

Goal of Conference:

To highlight efforts and practices directed at making recovery a real possibility for the broadest group of individuals with psychiatric disabilities and to promote the mainstreaming of those practices into “everyday operations”.

Who is it for?

• Administrators, directors of rehabilitation, behavioral health etc.
• Individuals with mental illnesses, researchers, practitioners, families, and educators.
• Government agencies such as Veterans Administration, Employment/Rehabilitation agencies, Offices of Mental Health. Social Services etc.
  

Who is presenting?

Presenters from a wide diversity of cultural backgrounds, geographic locations, and experience with mental illnesses:

• systems leaders in transformation;
• program innovators;
• workforce developers;
• leading researchers.
  

What are some Presentation Examples?

• Eliminating Coercion
• Directing Innovations
• Global Perspectives on Rehabilitation & Recovery
• Embedding Rehabilitation in Organizations
• Functional Health as Foundation for Recovery
• Working as Peers
• Creating an Inclusive workplace
• Reaching marginalized Groups
• Honoring Differences
  

Be sure to look at the full list of presentations and registration before its too late.

All stakeholders are needed to design, reform, and rethink how we can make recovery oriented services a reality for all. We are proud to have the opportunity to host such an exciting event!

Sixth International Conference on Early Psychosis

Professor Patrick McGorry, IEPA2008 Conference Chair, writes:

Melbourne, Australia is the host city for the 6th International Conference on Early Psychosis. The meeting will bring together the world’s leading experts in early psychosis studies, research and treatments, acting as a forum for ideas to be exchanged, experiences shared, education developed and innovation inspired.

Visitors will find Melbourne an exciting city to explore. It has a reputation for friendly people, a cosmopolitan lifestyle, wonderful shopping and world-class entertainment.

An educational and stimulating program is being developed under the three stages of psychosis and will consist of plenary lectures, break out industry sessions, abstract presentations, a consumer festival and satellite meetings, including the 2008 Australian Schizophrenia Conference. We hope you can participate in the exciting program and look forward to welcoming you to Melbourne, Australia in October 2008.

To visit the IEPA2008 Conference Website, click here.

Thanks go to Dr. David Whitehorn of the Nova Scotia Early Psychosis Program for bringing this conference to my attention.