SURVIVOR OF PSYCHIATRY TO ADDRESS WORLD PSYCHIATRIC CONGRESS

Cork woman Mary Maddock and her husband Jim have been invited to speak at the XV11 World Congress of Psychiatry to be held in Berlin, October 8th to 12th.

The Maddocks are joint authors of the book ‘Soul Survivor – A Personal Encounter with Psychiatry’ which challenges psychiatry’s medical model of ‘treatment’ and describes how they rejected the label of Bipolar given to Mrs. Maddock in 1983 and who today, has been drug free for the past 18 years.

Their story also featured in the the book ‘Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs’ by German author and publisher Peter Lehmann who will be a keynote speaker in Berlin and is a fellow survivor.

Founded in 1961 with headquarters in Geneva, the World Psychiatric Association is the world’s largest organization of mental health professionals, representing 118 different countries and more than 200,000 psychiatrists.

Meeting once every three years, the theme of the Berlin congress is ‘Psychiatry of the 21st century: Context, Controversies and Commitment’.

In 2003, the Maddocks founded MindFreedom Ireland which campaigns for humane alternatives to the current ‘mental health’ system. It is affiliated to MindFreedom International and with them is opposed to forced ‘treatment’, the use of electroshock and other human rights violations, including those inherent in the 2001 Irish Mental Health Act.

It is also aligned with the Critical Voices Network Ireland (CVNI), a network of people from diverse backgrounds who want an Irish mental health system which is not based on the traditional bio-medical model and will participate in the annual two day CVNI conference in Cork to be held in the UCC School of Nursing in November.

End.

Jim Maddock
2nd October, 2017.
Ph: 0214894303;0860624445