Open Dialogue Town Halls and Panel Discussions

Panel Discussion, July 13, 2022:  The PODcast – What is Peer-supported Open Dialogue?

“Open Dialogue” – Western Lapland’s response to its community’s mental health crises – has inspired projects around the world that seek to emulate its elements and principles, in the hope of replicating its success. However, outside of the community and culture that have co-evolved with Open Dialogue over its decades of development, these philosophies and practices have met challenges. One of the largest and, arguably, most successful efforts to address these challenges – Peer-supported Open Dialogue (POD) – has resulted in the largest research study yet of Open Dialogue-inspired services. The ODDESSI trial is studying the adoption of Peer-supported Open Dialogue within several of the U.K.’s National Health Service trusts.

POD adds elements to Open Dialogue that can help to strengthen aspects that are challenged outside of OD’s origin – a strong sense of community, along with a level of mindful awareness that may be naturally present among people who spent decades developing Open Dialogue together. The “peer” part of Peer-supported Open Dialogue includes essential voices in the system’s dialogue – relational, familial, community and societal perspectives that in a medically-focused system of care fall to the margins. The PODcast will explore how POD seeks to bring Open Dialogue principles and practice to an intrigued but skeptical – and increasingly desperate – world. In our first episode we will meet with some of POD’s originators – psychiatrist Russell Razzaque of NELFT, family therapist Val Jackson, and professor Mark Hopfenbeck to learn about POD’s origins, development, and future. In future episodes we will meet with teams that are bringing POD to NHS trusts, as well as others who are actively engaged in bringing Open Dialogue to the world.


Town Halls: A 10-part Series on Open Dialogue During a Time of Crisis

COVID-19 has forced us all into new ways of being, new ways of relating to each other, and new ways of responding to each other in a time of crisis. These new ways reveal more clearly than ever how essential dialogue is to the human experience.

What are dialogical practitioners doing — and learning — in this time of crisis? What do these learnings suggest or make possible that might have previously seemed unattainable? What insights do people who have lived with a sense of crisis, often cut off from “mainstream” dialogues, have to offer a world in crisis?

Hosts

Kermit Cole and Louisa Putnam are inspired by Open Dialogue to respond as a team to individuals, couples and families in crisis. They have hosted many symposia in Santa Fe, New Mexico to explore the intersections between Open Dialogue, Hearing Voices, and other Dialogical approaches, and recently completed their studies under Jaakko Seikkula to be Open Dialogue trainers.

Town Hall 1 – Exploring Dialogical Responses in a Time of Crisis

Streamed live on Apr 17, 2020

COVID-19 has forced us all into new ways of being, new ways of relating to each other, and new ways of responding to each other in a time of crisis. These new ways reveal more clearly than ever how essential dialogue is to the human experience. What are dialogical practitioners doing — and learning — in this time of crisis? What do these learnings suggest or make possible that might have previously seemed unattainable? What insights do people who have lived with a sense of crisis, often cut off from “mainstream” dialogues, have to offer a world in crisis?

Panelists

Jaakko Seikkula teaches dialogical practice to the many people around the world who have been inspired by Open Dialogue, the response to mental health crises in Tornio, Finland that Jaakko’s team created.

Richard Armitage is a dialogical practitioner and trainer in Denmark at a large centre for supported living and rehabilitation.

Iseult Twamley is a Clinical Psychologist and Open Dialogue Trainer/Supervisor. Since 2012 she has been Clinical Lead of the Cork Open Dialogue Implementation, Ireland.

Rai Waddingham is an Open Dialogue Practitioner, international trainer, and has created, established and managed innovative Hearing Voices Network projects in youth, prison, forensic, inpatient and community settings.

Andrea Zwicknagl is a peer support worker in Switzerland and a board member of HOPEnDialogue.

Town Hall 2 – Is Dialogical Response the Most Effective – and Most Necessary – Response To Crises?

Streamed live on May 1, 2020

This panel discusses the challenges of meeting crisis in our communities with a dialogical response, as well as how dialogue is the natural – and perhaps, for humans, most necessary – approach when we are called to face the fears of an uncertain future. What we are learning that we can build on as we move into that future together?

Panelists

Alita (Markus) Taylor is an Open Dialogue trainer and supervisor, and founder of Open Dialogue Pacific. She is a family therapist licensed in CA & WA and is on the board of HOPEnDialogue.

Fletcher Taylor MD works at Dialogical Therapy in Tacoma with Alita. He is a faculty member at the University of Washington with published research on PTSD, sleep, and learning disabilities. He co- facilitates Open Dialogue network meetings.

Jimmy Ciliberto is a psychologist and psychotherapist offering individual and family therapy as a private practitioner in Milan. He is also clinical supervisor of an association offering a wide set of interventions to minors in the Lombardy region of Italy.

Dr Ramunė Mazaliauskiė is trained in psychiatry, systemic family psychotherapy and business administration. She has worked with acutely psychotic patients and has been part of developing dialogical work and training in Lithuania since 1966. She is president of the Lithuanian psychiatric association.

Yasmin Ishaq is an accredited trainer in Dialogic Practice, Social worker and a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist. She has been at the forefront of developing Early Intervention in Psychosis and led the first operational Open Dialogue Team in the UK.

Town Hall 3 – Dialogue is Just What the Doctor Ordered

Streamed live on May 15, 2020

A discussion that will reflect on the panelists’ experiences fostering dialogical perspectives in ‘mental health’ care, before and during the current crisis. Kermit Cole and Louisa Putnam are inspired by Open Dialogue to respond as a team to individuals, couples and families in crisis. They have hosted many symposia in Santa Fe, New Mexico to explore the intersections between Open Dialogue, Hearing Voices, and other dialogical approaches, and recently completed their studies under Jaakko Seikkula to be Open Dialogue trainers.

Panelists

Martijn Kole is one of the founders of Enik Recovery College, and a peer leader in the Netherlands. He is one of the leading persons in the Dutch peer-supported open dialogue movement.

Robert O. Cotes, MD is an Associate Professor at Emory University School of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Cotes directs outpatient services for people experiencing psychosis at Grady’s Outpatient Behavioral Health Clinic in Atlanta, GA. including Open Dialogue Atlanta.

Dr Russell Razzaque is a London based psychiatrist with twenty years experience in adult mental health specialising in Open Dialogue, mindfulness and the connection between spirituality, consciousness and mental health.

Regina Bisikiewicz has been president of the Polish Institute of Open Dialogue since 2011. She is a graduate of the Department of Organisation & Management of Wroclaw University, and the Canadian Management Institute.

Corrine Hendy has worked with families using Open Dialogue in the NHS since 2014. She is a co-applicant and service user researcher on the OD UK national trial. She provides support and training to Peer Open Dialogue Practitioners in the trial, and co-chairs the Lived Experience Advisory Panel.

Town Hall 4 – Four Decades of Making Safe Spaces for All Voices, The Hearing Voices Network

Streamed live on June 6, 2020

In 1987, Patsy Hage, psychiatrist Marius Romme and Sandra Escher started the Hearing Voices Movement. Today the Hearing Voices Network is creating safe spaces for people and their voices – and other experiences perceived as “anomalous” – in 35 countries, expanding the frontiers of meaningful human experience around the world. This “Dialogue in a Time of Crisis” Town Hall will explore how the Hearing Voices Movement, like Open Dialogue, has been building the resources the world needs at this pivotal moment of in our collective history, and whether and how the two movements can ally in the work yet to be done.

Panelists

Rufus May works in mental health in-patient wards as a clinical psychologist. From his own experiences of being detained in hospital and coercively treated for psychosis he is passionate about collaborative, holistic approaches to confusion and distress.

Caroline Mazel-Carlton is a voice-hearer and currently Director of Training for the Wildflower Allliance (home of the Western Mass Recovery Learning Community) and the national Hearing Voices Research and Development Project. She also serves on the HVN-USA Board.

Chacku Mathai is an Indian-American, born in Kuwait, who has experienced extreme states, including voice hearing, since he was a teenager. He is a Hearing Voices Network group facilitator in New York City.

Ronda “Ro” Speight is a New York State Certified Peer Specialist, Certified Recovery Peer Advocate, Hearing Voices Network facilitator and Peer Supported Open Dialogue Co-Trainer, along with Cindy Peterson- Dana, at the Mental Health Association of Westchester in Westchester County, New York.

Paul Baker is a community development worker, group worker and part of the group that developed one of the first hearing voices networks in Manchester, England. In 2014 he was a co- founder of CENAT, (New Approaches to Mental Health Forum) in Brazil, working to support the development of a hearing voices network.

Cindy Marty Hadge experienced physical, emotional, sexual and medical trauma starting as a child. She discovered that she lived close to one of the very few Hearing Voices Network groups in the US and is now a parent, grandparent, and trainer for the Western Mass Recovery Community.

Town Hall 5 – How Dialogue Can Respond to Discrimination. Addressing Racism & Structural Racism

Streamed live on June 19, 2020

The HOPEnDialogue project, Open Excellence and Mad in America invite you to an ongoing series of ‘Town Hall’ discussions exploring the challenges, learnings, and opportunities for personal and societal growth found through dialogical responses to crisis in the age of COVID.

In this harrowing time, we are gathering a group of experienced dialogical practitioners to learn together how to deal with racism and how dialogic spaces can honor the painful and traumatic realities that weave through our social, cultural and historic worlds to generate possibilities for healing.

Panelists

Host Tushanna Price is a former Iraqi and Enduring Freedom veteran, who is now practicing as an LMFT-A, both in private practice and at The Houston Galveston Institute. She is currently working on her Ph.D, with an interest in the uses of collaborative-dialogic practices with African-Americans.

Paul Ekwuruke is a first generation black African resident in the UK. He studied Anglo American history and Sociology in France before studying mental health nursing and Refugee Studies in the UK. He is a father and grandfather as well as a student of Open Dialogue.

Keith Wood is a psychologist with the Emory University’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Grady Health System’s Outpatient Behavior Health Clinic. He has been involved with Open Dialogue and dialogic practices for four years.

Cindy Fisher is an African American mother and grandmother, has a Masters in Education and is currently being trained in the Open Dialogue Model. She has made it her life’s purpose to attempt to reform the mental health system.

Dr Russell Razzaque is a London based psychiatrist with twenty years experience in adult mental health, specialising in Open Dialogue, mindfulness and the connection between spirituality, consciousness and mental health.

Charmaine Harris is an in-house Open Dialogue Trainer for East London NHS Foundation Trust in the UK. She is also an Open Dialogue Specialist Practitioner for the ODDESSI research study and a Tutor of the 4 week residential Peer Supported Open Dialogue (POD) UK training.

Hosting the chat is Rai Waddingham. Rai is an Open Dialogue Practitioner, international trainer, and has created, established and managed innovative Hearing Voices Network projects in youth, prison, forensic, inpatient and community settings.

Town Hall 6 – Open Dialogue in Hospital Emergency and Inpatient Settings

Streamed live on September 11, 2020

Around the world, people who are looking for better ways to respond to those in “mental health” crisis are finding inspiration near the arctic circle, in Tornio, Finland.

This September 11, at noon U.S. eastern time, HOPENDialogue, Open Excellence and Mad in America will gather a community of people around the world who are excited to build on Tornio’s inspiration, for a discussion of the successes and frustrations of implementing Open Dialogue’s principles in emergency rooms and inpatient settings outside of Tornio’s Keropudas hospital.

Panelists

Joseph Stoklosa MD is clinical director of McLean’s Psychotic Disorders Division. He is a national and international speaker on pharmacology, Open Dialogue and a hands-on leader in program innovation at McLean Hospital.

Sally Halcro has lived experience of mental health crisis. She is trained in Dialogical Peer Support & Relational Recovery Practice, with a focus on peer support in Open Dialogue.

Cindy Peterson-Dana LMHC works collaboratively to develop transformative mental health and survivor/ peer services. She Vice President for Peer and Recovery Support Services for the Mental Health Association of Westchester, NY.

Magnus P. Hald is a psychiatrist at the University Hospital of North-Norway.
He is now engaged in developing a medication free treatment unit within the hospital.

Erin Curtis MD is an attending psychiatrist at the University of Vermont Medical Center, where she works in inpatient psychiatry utilizing dialogic practice during daily team meetings with patients.

Genevieve Williamson is an attending psychiatrist and assistant professor of psychiatry on the inpatient unit at the University of Vermont Medical Center.

Town Hall 7 – What is Open Dialogue Today?

Streamed live on October 23, 2020

In the age of Covid, when our social, professional and economic structures are re-forming, as time zones and geography are almost moot in the world of Zoom, the opportunity and need for “Open Dialogue” is even more apparent. Many aspects of Open Dialogue that have previously been challenging are become self-evident in times of crisis; immediate response, flexibility, equality & polyphony, tolerating uncertainty, and most importantly our responsibility to each other become more evident with each day’s headlines.

Panelists

Jaakko Seikkula teaches dialogical practice to the many people around the world who have been inspired by Open Dialogue, the response to mental health crises in Tornio, Finland that Jaakko’s team created.

Dr Tamaki Saito is a professor of Social Psychiatry and Mental Health at the university of Tsukuba. Specialist in adolescent psychopathology and pathography. Author of Hikikomori: Adolescence Without End, 2013 and Beautiful Fighting Girl, 2011.

Ronda “Ro” Speight is a New York State Certified Peer Specialist, Certified Recovery Peer Advocate, Hearing Voices Network facilitator and Peer Supported Open Dialogue Co-Trainer, along with Cindy Peterson- Dana, at the Mental Health Association of Westchester in Westchester County, New York.

Olga Runciman is the first and only psychologist in private practice in Denmark to specialise in extreme states (psychosis). She is an international trainer and speaker, writer, campaigner, and artist. She is a co-founder of the Danish Hearing Voices network and the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal.

Sandra Steingard recently retired from her work as a psychiatrist in a community mental health center in Burlington. In the latter part of her career, she was influenced by two major areas of work: Finnish Open Dialogue and drug-centered pharmacology as articulated by Joanna Moncrieff.

Reflecting Team

Cathy Thorley is a systemic family therapist and Clinical lead for Open Dialogue at the North East London NHS Foundation Trust – one of the research trial sites comparing Peer Supported Open Dialogue (POD) with treatment as usual. She recently completed a two-year international trainers training in Open Dialogue in Helsinki.

Mia Kurtti is a nurse, MSc, Family Therapy and Open Dialogue trainer and supervisor. She has been working in mental health services as a nurse in Western Lapland, Finland since 2002 with individuals and their networks. She has also been a trainer on many international Open Dialogue/Collaborative training programmes.

Paul Ekwuruke is a first generation black African resident in the UK. He studied Anglo American history and Sociology in France before studying mental health nursing and Refugee Studies in the UK. He is a father and grandfather as well as a student of Open Dialogue.

Yuichi Oi is a psychiatrist and occupational physician who completed training under Jaakko Seikkula to be Open Dialogue trainers. He is a member of the steering committee of Open Dialogue Network Japan. He offers dialogical team meetings for families and engages in research and development on Open Dialogue training in Japan.

Town Hall 8 – Peers and Open Dialogue

Streamed live on December 11, 2020

As Open Dialogue has been adopted into mental health care in communities around the world, peers have been increasingly recognized as an integral part of the team. However, their roles, titles, and training have been part of an evolving conversation. In this Town Hall we will explore this dialogue with peers from the Netherlands, Finland, the U.K., and Ireland, and a reflecting team from Finland and Israel.

Panelists

Martijn Kole is one of the founders of Enik Recovery College, and a peer leader in the Netherlands. He is one of the leading persons in the Dutch peer- supported open dialogue movement.

Rai Waddingham is an Open Dialogue Practitioner, international trainer, and has created, established and managed innovative Hearing Voices Network projects in youth, prison, forensic, inpatient and community settings.

Matthew Weadon works primarily as an existential psychotherapist, is a trainee psychologist and identifies as a peer with lived experience. He is currently conducting PhD research in peer experiences of delivering Open Dialogue.

Nuala Kenny is a survivor of interventions by psychiatry. I have been working as a Peer Support Recovery Worker on the ground on a Community Mental Health Team and as a facilitator on an Open Dialogue team in Bantry, West Cork, Ireland.

Hannele Makiollitervo is a peer specialist from Tornio, Finland, currently involved in training and research in the Western Lapland health care district. She studied Leadership Psychology at University of Lapland.

Reflecting Team

Mia Kurtti is a nurse, MSc, Family Therapy and Open Dialogue
trainer and supervisor. She has been working in mental health services as a nurse in Western Lapland, Finland since 2002 with individuals and their networks.
She has also been a trainer on many international Open Dialogue/ Collaborative training programmes.

Lion Gai Meir leads the development of the lived experience department in Enosh, the Israeli Mental Health Association. She is a graduate
of the first Open Dialogue Israel course and volunteers as a board member for “Open Dialogue Israel”.

Lila Anand accompanies families in times of crises as part of an OD team, as well as in one-on-one meetings. Her greatest interests are exploring the complex position of professionals with lived experience and making Open Dialogue a public service in Israel.

Chat Moderators

Charmaine Harris is an in-house Open Dialogue Trainer for East London NHS Foundation Trust in the UK. She is also an Open Dialogue Specialist Practitioner for the ODDESSI research study and a Tutor of the 4 week residential Peer Supported Open Dialogue (POD) UK training.

Sherrine Barrowes is a Senior Peer Open Dialogue Practitioner and Counsellor/ Psychotherapist for Thurrock & Brentwood MIND and in private practice. Her journey as a psychotherapist began at the London School of Counselling and Psychotherapy in 2012. She is currently on the Mentorship Open Dialogue Programme.

Also supporting the chat

Bruce Flagg.
Cindy Peterson-Dana.
Rhonda L Speight.

Town Hall 9 – Psychiatry and Open Dialogue

Streamed live on February 12, 2021

Medical schools train their students to take control (and responsibility) in a crisis; to provide comfort and reassurance to people who are suffering and afraid by providing solutions in an authoritative voice. Psychiatrists in Open Dialogue, however, work within teams in which their expertise, though valued, is but one voice in a process; a process based on an understanding that mental health is built on a foundation of all voices being heard and responded to.

It can be hard to see how radically different Open Dialogue. The inclusion of social networks might seem like a simple (even obvious) extension of “treatment as usual.” It may seem even like an extension of treatment management and compliance.

How have psychiatrists met the institutional and economic obstacles to adapting Open Dialogue-inspired work? How have psychiatrists incorporated Open Dialogue’s research that finds that creating a safe space for dialogue, rather than trying to treat or fix, often resolves psychosis, and that medicating later, if at all, in smaller amounts and for shorter times, improves outcomes? How has taking on these challenges changed psychiatrists’ sense of their work, of their clients, and of themselves?

Panelists

Dr. Chris Gordon is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry (Part-time) at Harvard Medical School, and a Psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he teaches principles of collaborative formulation. He is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Dr. Gordon is a certified practitioner of Open Dialogue, and is a founder and clinical leader of the Collaborative Pathway at Advocates, Inc, the first US-based adaptation of Open Dialogue.

Thomas Ihde, MD is a US-trained psychiatrist and neurologist who lives in the UK and works as a medical director for the psychiatric services of the Bernese Oberland in Interlaken – the Lapland of Switzerland. His team was the first to implement open dialogue in Switzerland. He will share his own experience with dialogic practice, but also reflect on changes that happened within the team with the somewhat different role of psychiatrists in open dialogue.

Dr. Oriana Pinto is Coordinator of the First Psychotic Episode Intervention Program in the Centro Hospitalar do Entre Douro e Vouga (CHEDV) in Porto, Spain. She is co-founder and treasurer of MENTEMOVIMENTO — a partner in the development of the Habitus Project, which facilitates and mediates between persons with mental health problems, their therapeutic process, and local social, educational, health and employment structures. She is in the 3-year Open Dialogue training program in London.

Dr. Giuseppe Tibaldi has worked for 25 years in the Turin area, and is currently responsible for inpatient and outpatient services for 150,000 inhabitants near Modena. Has completed the three-year OD training for trainers and supervisors in London. For the last 15 years Dr. Tibaldi has promoted the writing and publication of recovery stories in Italy, as well as the translation into Italian of Robert Whitaker’s “Anatomy of an Epidemic”, and Peter Goetzsche’s “Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime”.

Dr. Sandra Steingard is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont. She worked for over 25 years in community mental health, where her clinical practice primarily included patients who experienced psychotic states. She serves as Board Chair of Open Excellence. Dr. Steingard is on the board of the American Association for Community Psychiatry, and is editor in chief of the Community Mental Health Journal. She edited the book, “Clinical Psychiatry: Controversies and Clinical Implications.”

Sirkka Mullis is a family member activist for Open Dialogue, co-founder of the Open Dialogue network in Switzerland and
trainer for Open Dialogue. She is committed to approaches that take the voices of the person in crises and the perspectives of family members seriously.

Andrea Zwicknagl is a peer support worker in an Open Dialogue base mobile crisis team in Interlaken, Switzerland. She is a part of the Swiss Hearing Voices Network and a member of the HOPEnDialogue project.

Pavel Nepustil, Ph.D. lives and works in Brno, Czech Republic, as an independent psychologist, consultant and trainer. His main focus is the field of drug use, addiction and recovery that he approaches from relational perspective. With the Narativ group he organizes trainings in collaborative-dialogic approach and in Open Dialogue.

Chat Moderators

Katharina Saliger, Raffaella Pocobello

Town Hall 10 – Birgitta Alakare: A Spirit for Open Dialogue

Streamed live on April 9, 2021

Birgitta Alakare was the chief psychiatrist on the team that created Open Dialogue in Tornio, Finland. The promising results of treatment of psychotic problems, in which the role of neuroleptic medication was minimized, were based in large part on her contributions and her emphasis on team work. In our next town hall, we will discuss what we might learn from her inspiration and how we can aspire to keep her quiet, powerful spirit alive in the wider world — and in ourselves.

Panelists

Jaakko Seikkula teaches dialogical practice to the many people around the world who have been inspired by Open Dialogue, the response to mental health crises in Tornio, Finland that Jaakko’s team created.

Dirk Corstens currently works as a social psychiatrist and psychotherapist in Den Helder/Texel for GGZ Noord-Holland Noord, a mental health care center in The Netherlands. He is a member of the team that delivers the Peer-supported Open Dialogue training.

Kari Valtanen is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and a trainer in Open Dialogue and family therapy. He works with the Western Lapland Adolescent Psychiatry Team and has been a trainer in Open Dialogue in several training programs in Finland and abroad.

Dr. Sandra Steingard is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont. She worked for over 25 years in community mental health, where her clinical practice primarily included patients who experienced psychotic states. She serves as Board Chair of Open Excellence.

Mia Kurtti is a nurse, MSc, Family Therapy and Open Dialogue trainer and supervisor. She has been working in mental health services as a nurse in Western Lapland, Finland since 2002 with individuals and their networks.

Robert Whitaker first wrote about Open Dialogue Therapy in his book Anatomy of an Epidemic. He is the publisher of madinamerica.com.

Chat Moderators

Katharina Saliger, Raffaella Pocobello, Rai Waddingham

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