Day 1 :
Keynote Forum
Stephanie Marie
New York University , USA
Keynote: The Untold Story of Psychiatric Institutionalization
Biography:
Stephanie Marie has two degrees from New York University (where she graduated with honors), an MBA and MA in French Studies. She has 20 years of experience marketing some of the biggest brands in the world. She currently speaks to audiences around the country about her harrowing journey with Bipolar Disorder I and she also offers audiences, in college and high school, mental wellness techniques to manage their own mental health
Abstract:
Stephanie Marie had her first bipolar episode at the age of 22. For the first sixteen years after this, she was able to successfully manage her mental health without daily medications. However, in 2001, her mental health situation changed drastically. In the midst of an episode that year, she inadvertently hit a police officer while being taken to the hospital. Charged with a felony, she was found Not Guilty by Reason of Mental Disease or Defect (NGI) in the state of Wisconsin.
Even though found not guilty. Stephanie Marie was placed in a 5-year supervisory program, hospitalized in a state mental health facility for more than a year and then put in a group home for six months. During her stay at the state hospital, she was raped more than once by fellow patients. Later, out of the hospital, she was even required to wear an ankle monitor for several months. The NGI system in WI treated her like a criminal and she was punished more severely than if she had been on probation or parole for a guilty offense.
Despite this dark 5-year period of her life, Stephanie Marie picked herself up and returned to her highly creative and productive life after leaving the supervisory program in WI. She then went on to work with horses in WI, ND and ID and then pursued her dream of teaching French, Spanish and English as a Second Language to children and adults. She also started to produce and direct a WWII documentary about compassion and the battlefield.
- Women’s Mental Health and Midwifery, Wellness and Health Care, Psychology and Psychological Resilience
Chair
Stephanie Marie
New York University (M.A. and M.B.A.)
Session Introduction
Natasha Williams
N. S. Williams Psychology Professional Corporation, Toronto, ON, Canada
Title: The Architype of the “Strong Black Woman†and Mental Illness-How do we address the gaps?
Biography:
Dr. Natasha Williams is a Registered Psychologist, keynote speaker and co-director of Allied Psychological Services in Toronto, Canada. She is the current trainer with the Adler Graduate Professional School in the CBT certificate program. Dr. Williams is also a guest facilitator/trainer with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in topics such as culturally adapting cognitive behavioural therapy for the English-speaking Caribbean community and Motivational Interviewing. She provides services in her private practice including assessment, consultation, supervision, individual psychotherapy and training to clients from diverse ethno-racial backgrounds, gender and socio-economic backgrounds.
Abstract:
Modern beliefs and symbolism in our community has created some problems. The “strong black women” and the “angry black women” stereotypes depict images of proud women who don’t take no for an answer. Black girls are often taught to “keep your head up” to get through anything. While it can be seen as a great life lesson, it may also allow black women to use this same coping strategy through adulthood which may foster an environment in which they have to manage everything. Regardless of what is happening in your life, black women are literally bred to be strong ‘all the time’. While this can be seen as positive in some aspects, the image has been carved in order to not allow ourselves our humanity. If you are suffering from depression or anxiety, black women often don’t acknowledge it because they believe that they can’t. The stereotypical image of the strong black woman can also be seen as a barrier to access to mental health treatment. Issues may not be seen as mental health related due to societal mental health stigma. This presentation aims to address the concept of the “strong black woman and its impact on the mental health and well being of women of African descent. What are some of the potential gaps in psychotherapeutic care and how can these gaps be addressed?
Federica Violi
University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago
Title: Exploring the Impact of Social Media on College Student Mental Health and Wellbeing
Biography:
Federica Violi, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago
Abstract:
The increase of complex mental health issues is emerging as an immediate concern around the world. Over 1.1 billion people worldwide experience mental illness or a mental health disability, and one in four people are affected by various mental health challenges. Research shows an increase in major depressive episodes among adolescents from 8.7% in 2005 to 11.3% in 2014, and from 8.8% to 9.6% among young adults. This subset of the population is representative of many college students, positioning mental health as a major concern for universities. At the same time, society is facing an outstanding advancement of mobile technology and social media, and corporations can take advantage of particular social marketing strategies in order to maximize their quantity, quality and usage among teens and young adults.
Biography:
Matthew Jackman holds a BSW (Honours) from Monash University and is completing his Masters in Counselling and Psychotherapy from the Australian College of Applied Psychology. He is a Lived Experience Academic at the Department of Social Work, Monash University in Melbourne Australia. He currently serves as the Western Pacific Representative on the Global Mental Health Peer Network in line with the Movement for Global Mental Health. He has partnered with academics at Yale, Harvard, Kings College and Ryerson University through his global mental health lived experience research and advocacy. Matthew is an international social worker and human rights activist who focuses his research and teaching on social and structural determinants causing mental distress amongst persons, families and communities.
Abstract:
In September 2018, the World Health Organisation hosted the annual Mental Health Gap Forum. WHO launched mental health as the fifth non-communicable disease reflecting a significant shift in responding to mental health at a global level as another public health issue require a global crisis response. The writer found himself at this forum through a political process of transformative recovery. His contribution to the Mental Health Gap Forum at ‘WHO’ and the Inaugural Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit in London September 2018 reflect the growth and capacity of humanity in experiencing mental distress and contact with the public mental health system in Austraia as a service user. Furthermore, his family caregiver mental health lived experience and professional mental health social work experience are drawn together throughout a retrospective autoethnographical account of global mental health advocacy as a person with lived experience of mental distress and as an international social worker. He documents the process of using his experience to advocate for other silenced people and groups with lived experience to be involved throughout global decision making bodies and service systems. He identifies the importance of peer work as a human rights discipline and an area for social work to develop strong global allegiance. The autoethnography account maps his journey throughout 2018, from admission to a psychiatric hospital in June 2018, to undertaking global mental health advocacy on behalf of his lived experience community at ‘WHO’ in September 2018. The results illustrate the importance of lived experience leadership in mental health and international social work as a means to achieve attitudinal change at WHO in focusing on human rights and social justice as core interventions to redressing the global mental health crisis.
Denis Larrivee
Loyola University Chicago, USA
Title: Cognitive Disorders and Mental Health: Neural Correlates in Contemplative Therapy
Biography:
Dr. Denis Larrivee is a Visiting Scholar at the Mind and Brain Institute, University of Navarra Medical School and Loyola University Chicago and has held professorships at the Weill Cornell University Medical College, NYC, and Purdue University, Indiana. A former fellow at Yale University's Medical School he received the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology's first place award for studies on photoreceptor degenerative and developmental mechanisms. He is the editor of a recently released text on Brain Computer Interfacing with InTech Publishing and an editorial board member of the journals Annals of Neurology and Neurological Sciences (USA) and EC Neurology (UK). An International Neuroethics Society Expert he is the author of more than 70 papers and book chapters in such varied journals/venues as Neurology and Neurological Sciences (USA), EC Neurology (UK), Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Religion and Mental Health, and IEEE Explore. In 2018 he was a finalist in the international Joseph Ratzinger Expanded Reason award.
Abstract:
Writing in 2006, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Alloys Alzheimer's first description of Alzheimer's Dementia (AD), Dr K Jellinger of the Institute of Clinical Neurobiology, Vienna noted 'that despite considerable progress in the clinical diagnosis, neuroimaging, genetics, molecular biology, neuropathology, defining risk factors, and treatment, the etiology of the disease is still unknown and, therefore, a causal treatment of AD will not be available in the near future.' Similar absences mark studies of other notable cognitive diseases, like schizophrenia, suggesting that current models and experimental studies may be directed to non-etiological features of the diseases. Significantly, cognitive diseases display both mental and physical symptomatic signatures. Hence, new conceptions on what is being progressively impaired in these diseases are needed to underwrite therapeutic advances both for the restoration of mental as well as physical health. Such inferences are likely to come from studies on the brain's global regulation, since a key symptom of these diseases is a pathological progression in the loss of self perception. Existing studies reveal, for example, that a fundamental brain network needed for the self construct, the default mode network (DMN), which is critical to monitoring the external environment, bodily states, and even emotions, is impaired in AD. Furthermore, functional MRI shows that activity in the posterior cingulate and right inferior temporal cortex and that in the bilateral inferior parietal cortex, are differentially affected, reflecting a weakening of causally influential relations amongst the DMN principal nuclei. Schizophrenia patients, on the other hand, display an inability to identify self initiated actions, which is likely due to a failure to link self representations to the body, that may originate in the DMN and premotor cortices. Therapeutic strategies that enhance the neural underpinning of self representations may therefore delay symptomatic progression in these diseases. Increasing evidence suggests that practices that enhance self integration, like contemplation, may assist in strengthening these features. This talk will discuss current research on the impact of these cognitive diseases on the neural representation of the self, and the potential use of contemplative practice in strengthening the self representation and delaying symptomatic onset