Quite a large potato

Every year for the last eleven, a few dozen researchers, clinicians and various others have gathered for two or three days of serious talking (and some less serious talking, too, as well as the other things people do at academic conferences). It was first held as a one day event, a brainchild of the most senior researcher in the field, who also happens to be the most prolific instant composer of rhyming doggerel in the Kingdom of Psychiatry: Professor Peter Tyrer.

Under Peter's early presidency of the emergent 'British and Irish Group for the Study of Personality Disorder` (aka BIGSPD), the emergent organisation had its annual jamboree in Jersey, Eire and Wales. In keeping with the  imperative to avoid exclusion, he has since lobbied for a meeting on the Isle of Man - but BIGSPD's new democratic processes (such as having a committee) have rather thwarted the idea.Others seemed somewhat opposed to the principle of any support for a regime which allows the flogging of its citizens for crime. Clearly not behaviourists, then. But I did wonder if it's more to do with having cats which look as if they have had their tails cut off, or wasting fossil fuels on extreme motor-bike races.

But this year, it was Oxford's turn - with Lady Margaret Hall providing the venue, and two Thames Valley consultant psychiatrists, Steve Pearce and Rex Haigh, being the local organisers. It was their intention to build on recent trends such as the increasing participation of service users, to include disciplines other than just psychology and psychiatry, and for people to have an unacceptable amount of fun (in such austere times). Any comment or analysis about the extent to which they succeeded will be left for respondents to this blog, but here are a few personal highlights which were appreciated by Bodd:

• Sunshine. Every day - on college lawns, with spring flowers and amidst gracious Oxbridge courtyards.
• A workshop session with Oxford and Wallingford Therapeutic Communities, demonstrating how they worked, but also giving the participating staff a hard time with their questions back about how it all works and why on earth they should want to work with 'people like us'. One answer was 'because ordinary people seem boring after working with you lot'.
• An opening lecture from Joel Paris, a distinguished Canadian psychiatrist from Montreal, who was advocating that mental health should be thought of more like RD Laing did, than our professional organisations or indeed western governments do nowadays.
• A Hog Roast with a marquee in the college gardens, not much enjoyed by the numerous vegetarians and vegans, whose alternative nutrition ran out - leaving several of them hungry. Despite this, no vegetarians were spotted changing sides. Perhaps unsurprising.
• A dazzling lecture by a Oxford philosopher, Dr Hanna Pickard, Fellow of All Souls College, who showed everybody that Aristotle had the problem sussed out over two thousand years ago.
• After dinner entertainment from Jo Brand, who is fortuitously related by marriage to one of the Oxford TC staff team. Particularly illuminating were her insights into how criminal justice and mental health systems interacted in South East London about twenty five years ago. How we hope things have changed a bit since then, and we might manage to change them a bit more yet...
• A wierd and vertigo-inducing rip through the last ten years of government policy for PD - with a slide show as upsetting as one of the nasty rides in a theme park, and people from the government team shouting at each other across the lecture room. With Peter Tyrer spontaneously pretending to be an American visitor at a funeral. Like a spiritualist revival meeting? But at least there were lots of picture of me (in my various mood states) on the screen.
• A debate about whether pictures of the brain tell us anything that matters. A German woman put up a picture of what goes on in an English brain, and it drew much praise. Enough said.