DIMH 2021 CONFERENCE


architectural/construction supply chain – simply holding the utopian position, and dragging along the


mainstream?, or do we work in the mainstream, and try to hold onto the utopian vision? For many people in radical mental health activism, and those with lived experience, everything I have said today (about creating the ‘ideal’ mental health environment) no doubt feels pretty obvious, and indeed it is. However, if you have lived experience, you are in pain; you’re not stupid. I’ve met people in mental health hospitals with PhDs. They have knowledge that you guys need to do your jobs better, but how do you gain access to it and collaborate? I get the feeling that as an industry – design, healthcare, even among psychiatrists and nurses – there’s a bit of an attitude that ‘if you’re mad, you are stupid’; that needs to change quite quickly.”


conference: “There will always be new experiences, and other challenges and things going on in society that affect mental health. I hope, however, that by working together, it will get better, and that by centring lived experience as a form of knowledge and knowledge production, you guys will do some better design.”


In St Helens, James Leadbitter and his team too ‘took over an empty Argos shop, and turned it into a mental health hospital for a month’, with a bell tent within it as a ‘chillout zone’.


Reluctant to cede power The speaker said he believed that, as with many institutions that had ‘had power for a long time’, the NHS was unlikely to just ‘hand it over’ to service-users to a significant degree. He said: “Some of us are


going to have to take that power and share it among ourselves in a more collaborative way, which will take time. Mental health hospitals have been around for 1000 years, and coercive care for a very long time. The focus on protecting infrastructure rather than people is a cultural thing; changing that will take time, but it needs to happen.”


‘Utopia’, James Leadbitter said, was ‘a process – not a point you get to, but a journey we will always be on’. He told the


Some of the event’s most important messages As he concluded, Katharine Lazenby thanked him for speaking so interestingly, and said that what he had said was ‘among the most important messages you will hear during the two days of this conference’. She told the


audience: “I hope you are as excited and inspired as I am, regardless of your role or background – whether you’re an academic, an architect, a health professional, or an expert-by-experience. I hope all of you are able to reflect on the content that James shared, and think about what that means in terms of what you do, and indeed what you might want to do next, and how you might apply these ideas and decisions.” With that, she opened the floor to questions.


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THE NETWORK | JANUARY 2022


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