Asylum Magazine for Democratic Psychiatry has been going for over thirty years. It has had special issues on anti-capitalism, on disability, on queer and feminist and Black politics. It is an essential resource for linking different kinds of social movement. It celebrates its years of activity bringing together mental health system survivors, professionals willing to practice in a different way and academics who teach and carry out critical research. We celebrate and discuss on Wednesday 28 June 2017 in an International Conference that will bring together well over 100 activists from around the world.

The conference is in the Roscoe Building at the University of Manchester, with registration beginning at 9.30. We will gather together to hear about radical alternatives to medical psychiatry, and we will take stock of some of the debates that have been aired in the pages of our magazine over the last three decades. We have a big party on the evening of the 28 June, which we are inviting all those attending during the day to stay over for, along with activists from Manchester who will have chance to eat and drink and discuss and take forward the different initiatives that the magazine supports.

The theme of this special anniversary conference is ‘Action and Reaction’, and around that theme we will be bringing together debates over the different ways in which Asylum and its supporters and its friends in other radical mental health movements have been involved in action and what the consequences of some of the reactions to these initiatives have been.

The programme for the day is packed. The morning chaired by Helen Spandler and China Mills is organised around contributions on the questions of ‘Survivor-led Research’ (with Diana Rose), ‘Creative Responses (with Rufus May), ‘Therapeutic Support’ (with Yasmin Dewan), ‘Critical Psychiatry’ (with Joanna Moncrieff), ‘Anti-Psychiatry’ (with Roy Bard) and ‘Neoliberalism’ (with Mick McKeown).

We follow up these interventions with afternoon break-out sessions facilitated by special guests, and including contributions from Anne Plumb, Lili Fullerton, Jen Kilyon, ActivaMent, David Morgan, Nancy Leaver, Suman Fernando, Alex Dunedin, Phil Thomas, Rich Moth, Conor McCormack and David Branson. These contributions include discussion on the Soteria House movement, support for Whistleblowers and the Heidelberg Socialist Patients Collective. Alongside these afternoon break-out sessions we have workshops on ‘Psychosis and Trauma’ (with John Read and Bob Johson), ‘Can Clinical Psychology be Radical?’ (with Craig Newnes) and ‘Mad Love: Redesigning the Asylum’ (with Hannah Hull).

We have fantastic papers in the afternoon with Sam Warner and Clare Shaw, Chris Wood, Rowland Urey, Karlijn Roex, Wilson Franco and Paulo Beer and Dolly Sen. Our contributors come from across the UK, and we also have visitors from Brazil, Catalunya and Germany.

We round off the day with a plenary session with the editor and managing editor of Asylum Magazine (Phil Virden and Helen Spandler) to discuss future special issues and other possible events around the country that Alex Dunedin is already beginning to coordinate. Alex, of the Ragged University, will be collecting together digital versions of the posters and hosting them on the Ragged University Mad World Archive. We welcome more posters and stalls from different groups, please contact us about this on asylumconference2017@gmail.com

That is just the daytime! We finish the day event at 5pm, and then Alex has organised an evening event which will begin at 6pm and go on until late at Gullivers in Manchester City Centre. It is a large venue and there will be free food and drink and music and lots of chance to talk. Join us on the day, and the evening, and support us through crowd-funding for the event. If you are looking for accommodation, your best bet is to use www.booking.com, looking for somewhere near the Manchester University campus, for which the postcode is M13 9PL.

Links for 28 June Asylum Action and Reaction event:

Registration is still open at this link.

The programme for the day is here at this link

The crowd-funding link is here

The Asylum Magazine website is here

https://www.facebook.com/events/117183712033425/

You can contact us about the day at asylumconference2017@gmail.com