Resources

Below is a selection of resources that I have (co)produced – I hope you find something stimulating!

Journal articles, research and presentations:

  1. Grey, Flick (2019). ‘Flick Grey 2019 Peer workers in Open Dialogue – expereinces, dilemmas and dialogues..’ Thesis for Open Dialogue training, Open Dialogue UK (2015-2018), and research undertaken for SANE Australia’s Hocking Fellowship 2015 [Unpublished]
  2. Grey, Flick (2017) ‘Just Borderline Mad‘ Asylum: the magazine for Democratic Psychiatry 24(1), pp.7-9.
    In this article, I reflect on Open Dialogue, centres and margins, and how I understand my own experiences of distress (and the relationships between these). The article was originally a Madness Studies conference presentation, at Lancaster University in September 2016, before it was republished in Asylum magazine.
  3. Grey, Flick (2016) ‘Benevolent othering: Speaking Positively About Mental Health Service Users‘ Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology 23(3/4), pp.241-251.
    In this article, I analyse a series of “awareness raising” images, and examine discourses of co-production, through the lens of my doctoral research into benevolent othering. I argue that speaking positively about mental health service users can often function as a project of the “benevolent subject,” who gets to feel good about themselves, while maintaining the subordinate status of service users. A brilliant innovation in this journal edition is the creation of dialogue – two responses to my article were elicited to which I was then able to respond. Unfortunately, this article is copyright protected and can only be accessed by subscription (e.g. through a library).
  4. Grey, Flick (2012) To live is to fight: Human rights in mental health. Talk for the Dax Centre forum, University of Melbourne, August 9th, 2012.
    In this talk, I explore some of the nuances of how human rights intersect with mental health, including the feeling of just not mattering.
  5. Grey, Flick & Epstein, Merinda (2012) ‘All consumers are equal, but are some more equal than others?‘ New Paradigm: the Australian Journal on Psychosocial Rehabilitation. Working with Complexity (Spring/Summer 2012), pp.14-6.
    In this article, Merinda and I reflect on the various hierarchies that divide mental health consumers, including diagnostic hierarchies and hierarchies of trauma.
  6. Grey, Flick (2011) ‘Positive thinking about consumers.’ Presentation at The Mental Health Services Conference, 2011, published in the Book of Proceedings, in the “Recommended Reading” section.
    This is an early formulation of my thinking about ‘benevolent othering.’
  7. Grey, Flick (2010) ‘Opinion piece: No revolution in youth mental health without young people leading it! New Paradigm: The Australian Journal on Psychosocial Rehabilitation. Youth Mental Health (Spring 2010), pp.52-3.
    This is an opinion piece I wrote (quite some years ago now), based on my observations of the ways in which young people were “allowed” to participate in the “revolution” in youth mental health services.

Booklets:

Several other fabulous resources are available at the Our Consumer Place website (I’ve only listed the ones here that I was involved with producing).

Audio:

Videos:

  1. Opening the dialogue about madness and distress, Keynote, TheMHS Conference, Sydney 2017 (48:38). There’s also a recording of the subsequent Q&A session (1:01:31).
  2. Speaking about Open Dialogue, in conversation with Kermit Cole, London 2016 (20:55) Published on Mad in America. In this conversation, I think through what studying Open Dialogue has raised for me, as an Australian, as a peer worker, and as a human being.
  3. “How can we talk about this?” National BPD Awareness Day 2011 (15:45)
    In this talk, I wonder how we might be able to speak about experiences that get labelled as Borderline Personality Disorder, when these conversations are actually relationally very difficult!

[Fun fact: mycelium (fungal colonies like mushrooms) can communicate through vast networks underneath forests, including sending nutrients from one part of the forest to another – I find that a richly generative metaphor for how we nourish each other’s thinking]