OUR CONSUMER PLACE RESOURCES
Merinda's cartoons!
At last, Merinda Epstein's insightful and bitingly funny cartoons - social commentary on "mental health" - are available for your enjoyment. Click here. These are progressively uploaded, so do come check them out again!
A series of golden consumer-perspective research
These incredibly valuable research projects have been summarised here. We decided these needed to be made accessible so that more of us can learn from these wonderfully sophisticated, consumer-driven projects that yielded such sensible, useful insights. We can't recommend these materials highly enough.
- The Understanding & Involvement Project (U&I): 1991 -2001: an enormous Participatory Action Resarch project (summarised here), that emerged from a localised, grounded, response to a consumer organisation's demand that 'something must be done to change acute services' and that this must be driven by consumers.
- Deep Dialogue 1: Developing a structure that would allow for deep conversations to take place between consumers and service providers.
- Do you Mind? The Ultimate Exit Survey - Survivors of Psychiatric Services Speak Out: Powerful educative materials from survivors about some of the most important issues affecting consumers, including stigma, communication, medication, crisis assessment teams and gender.
- Lemon Tree Learning: An educational resource, looking at the most effective ways that consumers can participate in mental health services
- Lemon Looning Board Game: A teaching resource which is ostensibly a board game, but is really about creating an environment for consumers to educate staff by sharing their experiences in the mental health system.
- Second Deep Dialogue Project: Consumer-Staff Collaborative Groups: A Strategy for Enhancing Workplace Culture in Pursuit of Quality Outcomes.
Recent presentations/writings by OCP staff
By popular demand, we have decided to make some recent public presentations and writings by OCP staff available here.
- This is not about Catharsis!: My time in HDU Merinda Epstein's reflections on her (horrifying) experiences in a High Dependency Unit, mid-2011. Concludes with recommendations for change.
- Becoming more peer-focussed? Flick Grey's talk at the Mental Illness Fellowship, November 30th, 2011 (457 KB)
Borderline Personality Disorder Awareness Day (Oct 5th, 2011)
- Preface to "BPD: Diagnosis of Shame" Merinda Epstein's preface words - about the deep role of shame - before her powerpoint.
- "BPD: Diagnosis of Shame" Merinda Epstein's Powerpoint (2.54MB)
- "How can we talk about this?" Flick Grey's opening speech (with poem)
The Mental Health Services (TheMHS) Conference, Sept 2011, Adelaide
- "Positive thinking about Consumers" by Flick Grey (in ongoing collaboration with Merinda Epstein) (1.4MB) Flick's paper has been accepted for publication in TheMHS 2011 Book of Proceedings, to be published in 2012. In fact, it will be included in the 'Recommended Reading' section.
"Speaking Our Minds: A guide to how we use our stories"
Another FREE new resource, written entirely by mental health consumers.This booklet is all about mental health consumers' stories - how we use them, why we might not use them, and how we can best make use of our stories when we do share them.
This isn't just another book written by "mental health experts" telling us what's good for us; instead it's 84 pages all written from the perspective of those of us who have been there and have the stories to tell! And it includes some fabulous new cartoons from Merinda Epstein.
The booklet is free to download from our website (see below). Consumers can request a FREE, single hard-copy to be posted out to them. Otherwise, hard copies are $10 each (which is still below the cost of printing, postage and handling). It was launched by the Hon. Mary Wooldridge (Victorian Health Minister) at the opening of Mental Health Week, October 10th, 2011.
Option 1: Download a copy here
Option 2: Contact Our Consumer Place to place an order for multiple copies (@$10 each); service@ourconsumerplace.com.au or download the order form
Option 3: (for Victorian consumers only) Request a FREE hard-copy to be posted to you by completing this form. Please note that you will automatically be joining our mailing list by completing this form.
"So, you've got a 'Mental Illness'? ... What now?"
A FREE new resource written entirely by mental health consumersFinally! A resource written by those who have been there. This booklet is an introduction to the mental health system, to "consumer perspective" and to some of the diversity of how consumers respond to a diagnosis of 'mental illness,' written entirely by a team of mental health consumers.
It provides information ranging from what "consumer" means to how diagnoses work; from where to find help to human rights frameworks. It is brimming with useful information, all from the perspective of people with lived experience of 'mental illness.'
Beautifully illustrated with cartoons by batty cartoonist and 2004 HREOC Human Rights Award winner, Merinda Epstein, and punctuated througout with thoughts about madness, creativity, power, language and the human condition, this resource will appeal on many different levels.
Praise for "So, you've got a 'Mental Illness'? ... What now?":"Congratulations on a great publication. It is a pleasure to read something that reads so well. You have managed to find a voice that is accessible, sustains itself on the side of the consumer without being in any way shrill or provoking, and at the same time is very informative. I enjoyed reading it, which is a most unusual thing. Why can't all publications in the field of mental health be written in this sort of style. Perhaps the answer is both that it's not all that easy to achieve, as well as that people have been persuaded that managerial styles of writing is what we should be reading."
- Malcolm Morgan, Senior Manager from MIND Australia
Option 1: Download a copy here
Option 2: Contact Our Consumer Place to place an order for multiple copies (@$10 each); service@ourconsumerplace.com.au or download the order form
Option 3: (for Victorian consumers only) Request a FREE hard-copy to be posted to you by completing this form. Please note that you will automatically be joining our mailing list by completing this form.