Conference - Mind Reading: The Role of Narrative in Mental Health

18th-19th June 2018, University of Birmingham

Key note speakers:

Professor Brendan Drumm (UCD)

Professor Femi Oyebode (University of Birmingham)

Professor Chris Fitzpatrick (UCD)

Professor Dame Sue Bailey, and

Professor Sally Shuttleworth (University of Oxford)

Do clinicians and patients speak the same language? How might we bridge the evident gaps in communication? How can we use narrative to foster clinical relationships? Or to care for the carers?

This two-day programme of talks and workshops is a collaboration between the University of Birmingham, UCD Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Diseases of Modern Life and Constructing Scientific Communities Projects at St Anne’s College, Oxford. Together we seek to explore productive interactions between narrative and mental health both historically and in the present day. Bringing together psychologists, psychiatrists, GPs, service users, and historians of literature and medicine, we will investigate the patient experience through the prism of literature and personal narrative to inform patient-centred care and practice, and focus on ways in which literature might be beneficial in cases of burnout and sympathy fatigue.

A DRAFT PROGRAMME IS AVAILABLE HERE: https://literatureandmentalhealth.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/mind-reading-programme1.pdf

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN AND PLACES CAN BE BOOKED: https://shop.bham.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/college-of-arts-law/school-of-english-drama-american-canadian-studies/mind-reading-literature-and-mental-health-conference