It has been a beautiful week on Lewis, blue skies, light winds and wonderful sunsets, I feel at home here already.

The course went very well last week. The presentations were stimulating and creative, the last one a role-play based on the “mental health bus’ was particularly funny.

I left Ron in Dundee to come back home as he was flying to Denmark. He has been working for the “Castle” near Copenhagen for the last 3 years helping them change manage a rehabilitation service into a recovery orientated one. They have already had many successes, he also works with Jorn & Anne Erikson in Psykovision a sister agency to ours, so he currently working with voice hearers and workers 2 hours away from Copenhagen deep in the countryside.

Speaking of voice hearing I caught up with Rufus May’s documentary about the Doctor who Hears Voices






Wow well done Rufus, it was thoughtful and brave and I hope it helps to timulate debate in a positive way. I remember Rufus “coming out” about his diagnosis at one of our early Handsell conferences we used to hold in Birmingham. He attended the conference and approached Ron & I to ask if he could get up and speak, he gave a moving account of his life and psychotic experience, he and a lot of the audience including me were in tears, he was honest and open.

Since then he has gone from strength to strength in his fight to see different approaches to working with psychosis accepted in the main stream. I wish him luck with his nomination for the Mind Champion award –he deserves it. Especially as he still fights the system from inside as an excellent psychologist.

We have run 3 voice dialoguing courses with Rufus & Dirk Corstens and will be incorporating the course in a residential course we are planning in Fife from 22nd September to 26th, Dirk and Eleanor will be involved along with Ron, unfortunately Rufus is away teaching in Switzerland.

Well I must go back to unpacking boxes, I still have so much to do to make this place a home

Lol

Karen