Imperfect Cognitions

This week's post is by Floriane Brunet (Service de pédopsychiatrie, CH de Saint Nazaire) and Christophe Gauld (Service de Psychopathologie du Développement de l’Enfant et de l’Adolescent, Hôpital Femme Mère Enfant – Hospices Civils de Lyon).  Floriane Brunet  Christophe Gauld Today, growing attention is being directed toward self-diagnostic practices among teenagers, a trend that may legitimately be related to the notions of childism and epistemic injustice within adolescent psychiatry. These two notions provide insight into the multiple processes through which adolescents’ testimonies are silenced within Western societies. Becoming aware of this systemic invisibilization of singular adolescent experiences, as well as of the continuum of violence directed toward them, calls for renewed forms of adult engagement. How does this bundle of domination shape the way clinicians listen to adolescents lived experiences? How can the reception of self-diagnostic practices at this ag...

On 5th June, the Royal Society for Medicine hosted a workshop to explore the some of the issues - particularly the practicalities surrounding mental health interventions in schools. The event brought together medical and educational professionals and provided a forum to discuss ongoing projects supporting young people’s mental health, difficulties and potential courses of action for improvement. In the following, I summarise some of the talks. Lord Richard Layard , Director of the Wellbeing Programme at the Centre for Economic Performance , London School of Economics, discussed the idea of schools having wellbeing as an explicit goal. The next step is to have as many schools as possible measuring progress towards this goal. Richard proposed that one way to do this is through a wellbeing code debated on by children, teachers, parents, (every 2 years) regarding how people relate to each other in classrooms, assemblies, the playground, and so on. Such a code would cover no...

The workshop Challenges To Wellbeing: The Experience of Loneliness and Epistemic Injustice in the Clinical Encounter originated from a multi-disciplinary conversation about wellbeing and happiness. Exploring the theme of challenges to wellbeing, this conversation brought together academics from across the University, practitioners, and campaigners. The workshop was hosted by Lisa Bortolotti and Sophie Stammers  for project PERFECT , and co-organised and funded by the Institute of Advanced Studies  (IAS). It was held at the Centre for Professional Development (CPD) in the Medical School on the 22nd of November 2017. This is a detailed report on the talks given that day. The workshop was divided in three sessions. Session One was dedicated to Themes from Project PERFECT . Kathy Puddifoot started with an Introduction to Epistemic Injustice. She defined epistemic injustice and spoke about the different types that have been identified. Kathy explained that since th...