Compassionate Mental Health - The Art of Us

We're excited to announce our next Compassionate Mental Health event -  a two day gathering on Monday 30 November and Tuesday December 1 at Kingsley Hall in Bromley-by-Bow, London, and breaking out at Bromley-by-Bow Health Centre. 

It's ten years since our first ever Compassionate Mental Health Gathering in Cardiff in November, 2016 and since then we had 20 learning retreats, and compassionate connection groups (online), plus delivered Compassionate Leadership Training to teams in NHS England. 

This two-day gathering is an opportunity to continue our exploring alternative approaches for living and working with emotional distress and altered states. We'll look together at how we can create spaces for people to experience suffering and joy - spaces that are safe, compassionate and balance open-hearted, non-hierarchical relationships with wise boundaries. 

We'll explore the importance of providing people with a safe and non-judgmental space to explore extreme states, and discover meaning in difficult experiences. We'll continue with our exploration of how we approach severe emotional distress and difficult states of mind. As with all Compassionate Mental Health events, we are calling for a more compassionate, trauma informed approach to mental distress. Ultimately we hope to work with others to inspire a new more wholesome psychiatry, with safe, healing mental health services that people want to use when they are in crisis. 

A key message of all Compassionate Mental Health events is choice not coercion - compassion not control, and the understanding that a mental health crisis can become a meaningful turning point and catalyst for change. Along with many other critical voices - we are calling for a radical shift in the way we understand the stuff that gets called “serious mental illness” .. changing the script, challenging stigma and raising expectations.

 And how can we create more spaces of belonging, community and radical hospitality where our frazzled parts can calm down. 

Drawing on contemplative traditions and therapeutic community practice, we will explore together how relationship, dignity and belonging might become the ground of mental health care, and discuss how to balance notions of safety, and "risk" looking squarely at the complexities in this field.....

Speakers and facilitators include:

Martin Kalungu Banda - Core-Faculty Member of the Presencing Institute, Visiting Fellow of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University's Said Business School and Co-founder of the Ubuntu.Lab Institute. Martin is a systems change guide and skilful group facilitator. 

Andy Bradley - Andy founded Frameworks 4 Change in 2004 with a mission to create and sustain consistently compassionate care environments for older people, including those living with dementia, and people experiencing mental health challenges or living with learning disabilities. Since then, he has developed compassion-based practices and delivered training internationally. His work is also deeply informed by his own experiences of profound psychological distress, and the wisdom gained from navigating both these experiences and the ways in which others and services have responded to them.

Dirk Corstens - Social psychiatrist and psychotherapist, now working in private practice in the Netherlands. Together with colleagues he delivers social network meetings from the perspective of Peer-supported Open Dialogue and works with voice hearers according to the Maastricht Approach

Anneke Sips - Integrative healing at the intersection of social psychiatry, ancient wisdom traditions and earth-based practice. Anneke is a community psychiatric nurse, yoga teacher and author of "Wisdom of Psychosis" 

Chris Salway - Consultant Psychiatrist and former GP. He has a wealth of experience in a variety of NHS settings, and has recently taken a step back from statutory work to focus on academic research and developing alternatives.

Rita Long - Chair of the Soteria Network UK, and is a Lived Experience facilitator and Researcher

Anando Chatterji - Group psychotherapist working within a psychodynamic and group analytic framework. He believes in distress over diagnosis and co-created and co-produced therapeutic environments.

Arnaud Vallet - psychiatric nurse and Art therapist, famed for being lead clinician on the Adamant, a floating therapeutic day community on the banks of the River Seine in Paris. 

Victoria Tischler - Professor of Behavioural Science at University of Surrey. Victoria is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Her research interests focus on creativity and mental health and multisensory approaches to dementia care.

Venue 

Each gathering has been held in a venue that is therapeutic in its own way. Kingsley Hall has a radical 90 year history as a centre of peace activism, progressive ideas, social justice and community engagement. It has long been a place of radical welcome. In 1931, Mahatma Gandhi chose to stay at Kingsley Hall during the Round Table Conference, living simply in a small rooftop room among the people of London’s East End. Decades later, R. D. Laing and Joseph Berke made Kingsley Hall home to their therapeutic experiment in living alongside those in extreme states. Both moments reflect the Hall’s enduring spirit of radical hospitality - creating space where dignity, simplicity and belonging come before status or control.

In 1965 became the home of RD Laing's famous and controversial anti psychiatry experiment, using the Hall as an alternative community for treating people affected by mental health crisis. The aim was to create a model for non-restraining, non-drug therapies for those people seriously affected by schizophrenia. The idea of starting this type of community was an initiative suggested by Mary Barnes a former nurse and first resident as patient. 

Scottish psychiatrist, Laing, had a huge influence on the psychiatric survivor movement, and was a cultural icon, although not one without personal controversy.  Joseph Berke moved from the United States to join Laing at Kingsley Hall, where he became famous for his work with Mary Barnes. We were fortunate to have Joe Berke as part of our Compassionate Mental Health Gatherings, and sadly lost him as a physical presence in 2021. However, he remains integral to the roots of this project as someone who dared to practice in a different way - through the Kingsley Hall Experiment and later The Arbours. 

Many believe we are yet to fully build on the legacy of Laing's work - to meet people in extreme states as equals, and help them discover meaning in their madness and a way back out again.

 Listen to Will Hall's podcast on Madness Radio about the Legacy of RD Laing 

Who is it for? 

The event is for anyone curious about compassionate approaches, including people and families with personal experience, front-line staff, commissioners, managers, clinicians, GPs, policymakers and Third Sector staff. Together we'll explore new ways of thinking about service provision, and how we care for ourselves and each other within our families, communities and workplaces. 

Join us in changing the conversation around mental health, challenging stigma and raising expectations - by moving away from labels that frame mental distress as disorders for life, and towards safe, healing mental health services that people want to use when they are in crisis.

Register Today

Register today and join us for this unique event. 

Our one day programme will be a mix of experiential sessions and a chance to exchange ideas, lessons learned and best practices - with plenty of opportunities for participation, reflection and networking. Programme coming soon - it will start with optional meditation at 9am..register and meet and greet at 9.30 - programme starts at 10am and ends at 6pm... full speaker and workshop details coming soon 

Book Now...Some limited bursary places for people with personal experience on a low income, please contact Brigid Bowen ask@compassionatementalhealth.co.uk for more details and put bursary in title of email .. 

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What do people say?

“Exceptional. The fact people had travelled from far and wide shows the high regard the event was held in, and also the pressing need to change and the delivery of compassionate mental health services.”

“Above all people were able to release shame , guilt and silence around their stories and to find like minded community.”

“Such a blessing. An oasis. I felt privileged to be a part of it. Beautifully organised, to the last detail. The professional delivery of the event was outstanding and the supporting literature of excellent quality.”

"You have created a unique and invaluable contribution to the future of mental health. My daughter took her own life two years ago. I believe if either she or I had had access to the material and the diverse community you have put together, there could have been a very different outcome.”

Cancellation refund policy:

Registrations cancelled more than 45 days before the event will be refunded 80% of the registration fees.
Registrations cancelled less than 45 but more than 30 days before the event will be refunded 50% of the registration fees.
Registrations cancelled less than 30 days before the event will not be eligible for a refund.

Compassionate Mental Heath reserves the right to cancel the event due to events outside its control (e.g. illness of a speakers). Every effort will be made to give participants as much notice as possible, although this may not always be possible in some circumstances.

Photography and filming policy:

There will be discreet photography and filming taking place during the event (but not during workshops) which we will use for public information and publicity purposes. Please let us know on the registration form if you do not consent to be filmed or photographed.