Challenges to Wellbeing: The Experience of Loneliness and the Threat of Epistemic Injustice in the Clinical Encounter

WORKSHOP LEADERS: Professor Lisa Bortolotti and Dr Sophie Stammers

The workshop will take forward and sharpen existing cross-College conversations to flesh out new connections with the newly established Birmingham Institute for Mental Health, under the Directorship of Professor Matthew Broome.

The workshop is designed to explore potential for collaboration, impact, and possible global innovations inspired by the arts and humanities in the area of mental health (with a focus on loneliness and epistemic injustice). The workshop will bring together academics and non-academic partners to explore the unique potential of the arts and humanities to establish the value of people’s connectedness and the importance of respecting people’s agency and personhood when their mental health is challenged.  The workshop will seek to discern the unique contribution that Birmingham University can bring to this field, not least in terms of new approaches that can speak to people from diverse contexts and open a global conversation with local and international partners.

Areas for discussion will include:

Therapies: What can the arts and humanities in real terms bring to diagnosis, care, treatment, and wellbeing?

Research and Collaboration: Potential for cross college funding applications and jointly supervised doctoral researchers across philosophy and mental health.

Impact: Potential for engagement with the city and mental health organisations.

Innovation: Exploration of the potential of the arts and humanities as instruments for well-being across cultures and regions, towards a new global understanding.

Participants

From PERFECT:

• Lisa Bortolotti
• Michael Larkin
• Sophie Stammers
• Kathy Puddifoot
• Valeria Motta

From Birmingham more widely:

• Matthew Broome, Director of the Institute for Mental Health
• Anneli Jefferson Philosophy of psychiatry, moral responsibility and mental health.
• Will Davies Philosophy of psychology and psychiatry, perception, delusions.
• Alex Miller Tate Philosophy, suicide, depression, epistemic injustice.
• Matthew Parrot, Philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and psychiatry.
• Rachel Upthegrove Psychiatry, delusions, suicide.
• Brandon Stewart Psychology, social psychology, decision making, stigma.

External Experts:

• Kimberley Brownlee, University of Warwick
• Jolie Goodman, Mental Health Foundation
• Kellie Payne, Campaign to End Loneliness