Tag: Stigma
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Rick Rossiter of REFOCUS on Infinitely Polar Bear
We spoke to CPsychI REFOCUS member (Recovery Experience Forum of Carers and Users of Services) and See Change Ambassador Rick Rossiter following a First Fortnight screening of Infinitely Polar Bear. By Mary Hayes The movie stars Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana and follows Cam (Ruffalo) who lives with manic depression and bipolar disorder as he takes full…
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First Fortnight – Mental Health Arts Festival now underway nationwide
Now in its eighth year, First Fortnight is an arts-based mental health charity that organises a festival in the first two weeks of the year aimed at challenging stigma and discrimination. An awareness campaign in the First Fortnight of the year works because we are all a little raw that time of year and more…
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Annual Spike Milligan Public Speaking Competition
The College of Psychiatrists of Ireland’s annual Spike Milligan Public Speaking Competition is taking place on 23rd of November at 6.30pm in the Sugar Club in Dublin. This Public Speaking Competition was first held in 1999 as part of the Changing Minds Campaign of the College, addressing the stigma associated with mental health problems.…
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British Medical Journal – Mental illness is not a state of mind
In a Personal View recently published in the British Medical Journal Martha Balinska aims to differentiate between “existential hardship and overt mental illness“: Someone with major depressive disorder or psychosis is not going to get better simply by meditating or going for a brisk walk. The problem may be semantics. Speaking of mental illness rather than disease is…
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National Dementia Awareness Campaign – Understand Together
With 55,000 Irish people living with dementia, and half a million living in families affected by dementia the launch of the National Dementia Awareness Campaign – Understand Together was welcomed by Minister for Mental Health and Older People Helen McEntee who stressed the importance of this scheme: Each year 4,000 people in Ireland develop a…
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Bruce Springsteen opens up about mental illness in Born to Run autobiography
Following 7 years of writing Bruce Springsteen has released his autobiography Born to Run, in which the singer voices his battle with depression. Lifting the curtain on his demons Springsteen recounts how his father had a mental illness, and didn’t come to realise the gravity of his depression until later in life with him entering a period of major depression in his 60s. “I couldn’t…