Professor Patrick Callaghan, the previous Head of School for Health Sciences, has been awarded this year’s Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Annual Research Lecture.
The lecture is entitled 'Dangerous liaisons? The myth of mental illness and risk', and is a Public lecture for World Mental Health Day.
The Winifred Raphael Memorial Lecture is one of the main events in the RCN Research Society calendar, offering an exceptional opportunity for nurses, carers and service users to scrutinise mental health practice.
About the lecture
The myth of the mentally ill as dangerous and menacing persists, despite evidence to the contrary.
Risk assessment is pervasive in mental health practice. This continuing focus on risk, while well intentioned as it is in reducing harm and increasing people’s safety, has a stigmatising, and, in some cases, traumatic effect on people using mental health services. It reinforces the myth that people who are mentally unwell are an inevitable risk to society and that through risk assessment we can minimise or eliminate this threat.
Professor Callaghan will argue that it is the often unquestioned acceptance of the effectiveness of risk assessment and the unconscious bias that emerges from this narrative that poses the biggest risk. People living with mental health issues are frequently marginalised and often live in communities associated with recurrent harm and crime and that promote stigma.
When is the lecture taking place?
- Monday 10 October 2016, 6pm – 9pm
- Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross, Nottingham, NG1 2GB
The lecture is free to all but places are limited, so please do book your place via Eventbrite.
Posted on Thursday 15th September 2016