“As counsellors and psychotherapists surely we know that emotional distress is related to what one has experienced. Haven’t we been talking about attachment and trauma for too long to suddenly forget this? It is a disturbingly anomaly then that we as a profession seem to be colluding nicely with the biomedical mainstream take on mental distress that tells people they are ill.”

This training/workshop will look at how the narrative of diagnosis and disorder has crept in to counselling and psychotherapy and will suggest that this collusion with the medical model has served to obscure the stories of individuals by offering ‘explanations’ of illness & disorder.

It will also provide an opportunity to explore what we can do about this. Jo Watson is a psychotherapist, supervisor, trainer and activist with a professional history in the rape crisis movement of the 1990’s. She has worked therapeutically for the last 25+ years with people who have experienced trauma and adversity and has devised and delivered numerous training programmes and conferences for counsellors and psychotherapists, ‘mental health’ workers, teachers and other professionals who work with people in a therapeutic or support context.

Jo Watson

Jo actively challenges the biomedical model both inside and outside of her work and links emotional distress to social causes.

Jo founded the Facebook group ‘ Drop The Disorder !’ in September 2016. The group provides a space for people to discuss related issues and is collectively committed to challenging the disease model narrative of diagnosis and disorder and to implementing more positive responses to emotional distress.

Jo is the organiser of the “A Disorder For Everyone!” (AD4E) events that challenges the traditional response to emotional distress and explores trauma informed and socially responsible alternatives and the editor of the books ‘Drop the Disorder!’ - Challenging the Culture of Psychiatric Diagnosis, and ‘We are the Change-Makers’; Poems supporting Drop the Disorder. Both published by PCCS Books.

www.adisorder4everyone.com

@dropthedisorder