Open Dialogue International Community Forum

Research collaboration

#1

Dear all,

I am a predoctoral researcher at the Medical Anthropology Research Centre (MARC), Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain). I am currently working on a project funded by the Spanish government until 2026 to study the implementation of alternatives to coercion in mental health care. I just finished the open dialogue foundation course, I take part in open dialogue sessions at a public mental health center in Barcelona and collaborate with them and Hopendialogue to analyze the implementation of this approach in the country.

I am also the coordinator of the Mad In America global network, comprising users and survivors of psychiatry, critical practitioners and academics worldwide, and take part on other activities aimed at rethinking the dominant approach to psychological suffering to prevent overmedication, chronification, and abuses of people’s rights.

The present message is to offer my collaboration to any researcher and institution interested or working on open dialogue.

Enric Garcia Torrents
research@enricgarcia.me

#2

Hello,

world is small.
Happy to share some experience together.

1 Like
#3

Hi Vincent! :slight_smile:
I will love to chat someday, let me know when it would work for you!

#4

Hello,

Nice to meet you! I am a young public health researcher and a user of psychiatry. I am currently working on the Place of Respite research project (with Vincent here and many others). This year, with an other group, we are going to launch a participatory action research (PAR) about Open Dialogue. The objective of this PAR is to model the approach in a French and operational way, in each trained service and between services… and to prepare a randomized controlled trial with Aurélie Tinland (MD-PhD) and the different services that will want to join the adventure.

I would be glad to know more about your project of studying the implementation of alternatives to coercion in mental health care.

Let’s get in touch!

Saphir (pronoun her)
saphir.desvignes@gmail.com

#5

Vincent, my apologies I did not follow up on this conversation. How is the work going? I am now based in Sweden and about to kick-start a long term ethnographic stay over here. Yet, still much interested in learning how is it going for your group in France (you are based in South of France, right?) and checking if we can collaborate in any meaningful way. Myself about to host an event on political abuse of psychiatry, including worse offense cases but also those, as may be the case for many of us, where the unwillingness to accept scientific findings and implement best practices despite it all is leading to bad managerial and funding decisions that end up forcing professionals to work in less than optimal contexts, thus causing iatrogenic harm to users: https://enricgarcia.md/thesis/abuse.html

I remember your talk on the (not sure if it was hosted by UN and/or HRW?) talk on this exact issue, it was a really good one. A message many more should listen: if the evidence is that clear, and it is, why we are not translating the scientific knowledge into more effective healthcare already. I do believe it is a legitimate question to pose from both practitioners, researchers and of course users and their loved ones. Unfortunately it is a form of abuse against the discipline, and I have been in touch with many professionals who were suffering themselves because of the inability to do what they knew was right, or would be best if only decisions were taken more rationally and even slight changes for the better were adopted on time.

#6

Dear Saphir, really glad to be in touch and my apologies as well for the massively late reply. I had not been checking these forums for a long time. It is wonderful to read you set up participatory action research group, this kind of horizontal challenge-driven and informed by experience work is the most useful and sorely needed. I will love to hear more about how is it going for you, learn about how we could also set such kind of group, this far we have been struggling to even hold a traditional one in any of the services that attempts/ed to implement open dialogue in Spain. My email is research@enricgarcia.md will be contacting via email as soon as possible.