To: s-acc@yahoogroups.com

Cc: Bonnie Schell

From: Andrew Phelps <no-action@cwnet.com>

Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2009 12:25:30 -0800

Subject: [s-acc] Re: 'illness' paradigm

 

Hi

As with Lakoff, it's important to change the conversation. That means more than confining one's complaint to berating the present usage; it also means becoming part of the ongoing discussion to deconstruct the 'medical model' and reform the behavior management practices that sustain it. I appreciate Yza and Onm in this regard, and I'm impressed that Jln also has in his way engaged "the struggle for truth." The price of social change is having a good notion of what can bend and then grasping how to go about "bending."

Thursday I ran into Steve Segal in North Berkeley and had a meaningful and practical conversation. Steve runs the "Mental Health and Social Welfare" research program for the School of Social Welfare at U.C. Berkeley. In the 90s, he had the RFP for the Center for Self-Help Research (CSHR) in Berkeley, which involved a SAMHSA grant for the (West Coast component) of a research program to investigate the role of "self-help" in "treatment/recovery." Tanya Temkin the (former) editor of Madness Network News was an employee of CSHR. Greg Warren played a central role in the Santa Cruz MHCAN component of the CSHR study. [Not surprisingly, the "soul" of the study was eventually gutted by SAMHSA and Steve, to his credit, finally walked away from the grant itself.]

Anyway, we connected in a practical way and then yesterday I met with Steve and some other people at the U.C. Berkeley Faculty Club. Steve explained how he got the grant. He said, "Howie the Harp and Sally Zinman came to me and gave me the idea of applying."

More recently Steve presented for me at a faculty training for the San Jose-Evergreen Community College District. He talked about being a "juvenile delinquent" as a teenager and having learned about "labeling" first-hand. This was a good introduction for Delphine Brody and Jose Rangel, to explain to faculty and staff re "stigma and discrimination." [Hehehe they of course emphasized "discrimination."]

..

 

Andrew Phelps

 

 

Onm sent:

Agreed Yza. It's just a horrid word for a horrid "mental health" practice that keeps locating "stigma" in the "Illness paradigm" instead of where it BELONGS!