1. We must at all times remember, that the decision to take your own life is as vast and complex and mysterious as life itself.
Al Alvarez, The Savage God

2. the keys to understanding suicide are made of plain language … the proper language of suicidology is lingua franca – the ordinary everyday words that are found in the verbatim reports of beleaguered suicidal minds
Ed Shneidman, The Suicidal Mind

3. Suicidality as a Crisis of the Self
Popular myth:
“depression is the major cause of suicide”
Suicidality is best understood as a crisis of the self:
‘sui’ in suicide, both victim and perpetrator
closer to the lived experience
encompasses whole person – physical, mental, relational and spiritual
immediately raises important questions that suicidology largely ignores, especially …
who or what is this ‘self’ that is in crisis?

4. Integral Model - 4 Quadrants
Interior
Exterior
Individual
Subjective I
Objective It
Intentional (felt experience)
Behavioural (observable)
Phenomenology
Psychology/Psychiatry
Validity: aesthetic
personal meaning/values
integrity, sincerity
Validity: empirical
observable, measurable
testable, repeatable
Collective We
Its
Inter-Subjective
Inter-Objective
Cultural
Social
Sociology/Ecology
Anthropology
Validity: moral
shared meaning/values
ethics, justness
Validity: ‘functional fit’
cohesion, efficiency
ecological, economic

5. 4 Quadrants of Mental Health
First-Person (invisible)
Third-Person (visible)
Singular
Lived/felt experience
personal, private
full of meaning
stories, self-talk
‘consumer’ perspective
Observable behaviour
value neutral
medical, pharmaceutical
behaviour modification
therapies (e.g. CBT)
Plural
Mutually shared experience
shared meaning-making
collective story-telling
peer support
consumer delivered
services
Social infrastructure
hospitals, services etc
community development
public policies
laws (Mental Health Act)

6. The Full Spectrum (Levels) of Consciousness
Sources:
Plotinus
Aurobindo
St. Teresa
Grof
Steiner
Baldwin
Habermas
Maslow
Buddhism
Yoga
Kabbalah
Vedanta
Theosophy
Sufism
Non-Dual
Spirit
Matter
Physics
Life
Mind
Soul
Spirit
Biology
Psychology
Theology
Mysticism

7. AQAL – All Levels, All Quadrants
First-Person
Third-Person
Singular
I - intentional
IT - behavioural
Plural
WE - cultural
ITS - social

8. ‘Evidence-Based’ Science
First-Person
Third-Person
Singular
I - intentional
IT - behavioural
Plural
WE - cultural
ITS - social

9. ‘Evidence-Based’ Science
First-Person
Third-Person
Singular
I - intentional
IT - behavioural
Plural
WE - cultural
ITS - social

10. Flatland
“the great nightmare of scientific materialism was upon us (Whitehead), the nightmare of one-dimensional man (Marcuse), the disqualified universe (Mumford), the colonisation of art and morals by science (Habermas), the disenchantment of the world (Weber) – a nightmare I have also called flatland”
Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology
“The much touted ‘evidence-based’ research, policy and practice in mental health in Australia today is an ideological flatland nightmare” (Webb, 2006)

11. David Chalmers (Consciousness Studies):
first-person data are “data about subjective experiences that are directly available only to the subject having those experiences”
“The distinctive task of a science of consciousness is to systematically integrate two key classes of data into a scientific framework: third-person data about behaviour and brain processes, and first-person data about subjective experience”
“our methods for gathering first-person data are quite primitive, compared to our methods for gathering third-person data … the former have not received nearly as much attention”

12. Francisco Varela (neuroscientist):
“a major research problem even for the neuroscientist – they found themselves having to attend to this question of subjective experience whether they wanted to or not” (Chalmers)
Francisco Varela (neuroscientist):
“to deprive our scientific examination of this phenomenal realm amounts to either amputating life of its most intimate domains, or else denying scientific explanatory access to it. In both cases the move is unsatisfactory”
Varela & Shear, The View From Within

13. Chalmers and Varela on Spirituality
The Buddhist traditions and other contemplative traditions have a lot to offer … these guys have been studying subjective experience for many years from the inside, they’ve been gathering what we might call the first person data about the mind
David Chalmers
it would be a great mistake of western chauvinism to deny such observations as data and their potential validity
Varela & Shear

14. Some References
'Self, Soul and Spirit: Suicidology's blind spots?' New Paradigm September 2003
online at
‘Bridging the Spirituality Gap’
Australian e-Journal for the Advancement of Mental Health (AeJAMH) Vol 4(1) 2005
Integral Psychology: Consciousness, spirit, psychology, therapy,
Ken Wilber, Shambhala, Boston 2000
Or contact me:

15. Nothing About Us Without Us
Batty is Beautiful
Mad Pride
Hi, I’m Batty from insane australia (where batty is beautiful)
Nothing About Us Without Us

16. World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry
1991 –World Federation of Psychiatric Users (WFPU)
1997 – renamed to WNUSP (
2001 – 1st General Assembly (Vancouver)
2004 – 2nd General Assembly (Denmark)
joint congress with European network (
200+ delegates from 50+ countries
2005/6 – formation of Pan-African PANUSP
2008 – 3rd General Assembly (Africa/India?)
Four regions, two elected Board members from each:
Europe, Americas, Africa and Middle-East, and Asia-Pacific
Asia-Pacific: Chris Hansen (NZ), Mari Yamamoto (Japan)
[Deputies: Bhargavi Davar (India), David Webb (Australia)]

17. WNUSP - Major projects/activities:
UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People
WNUSP is UN accredited NGO at the Convention negotiations
delegation led by Tina Minkowitz, a US psych survivor, human rights lawyer, and one of three Co-Chairs of WNUSP
Tina has played a leading role in shaping Convention
World Health Organisation (WHO)
WNUSP representative/advisor to WHO Disability and Rehabilitation (DAR) project to produce a World Report on Disability and Rehabilitation by 2009
a ‘tense’ relationship with Mental Health division of WHO
International Disability Alliance (IDA) … etc etc

18. UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
final text of Convention completed in August 2006
expected to be adopted by UN General Assembly in December – becomes international law when …
20 countries ratify (sign on) to Convention
legally binding undertaking to implement the Convention in domestic law
A‘paradigm shift’ in how we think about disability:
prohibits any discrimination on the basis of disability (there goes our Mental Health Act)
a person’s ‘competence’ to be based on their legal capacity (i.e. not mental capacity)

19. Social Model of Disability
as opposed to medical model of illness
disability defined as functional limitations
something you experience, not something you have
that arises through interaction with environment
environmental factors: physical, social, attitudinal
human rights a core issue
especially self-determination
psychiatric/psychosocial disability is a recognised member of the disability community …
despite Victorian legislation to the contrary!

20. Social Model of Disability
Person
(with health condition)
Disability (functioning)
Activities Participation
(limitations) (restrictions)
Environmental Factors
(facilitators or obstacles)
Physical Social Attitudinal

21. Medicalised (i.e. WHO’s) Social Model of Disability
Person
(with health condition)
Disability (functioning)
Activities Participation
(limitations) (restrictions)
Environmental Factors
(facilitators or obstacles)
Physical Social Attitudinal

22. Medicalised (i.e. WHO’s) Social Model of Disability
Health Condition
(i.e. diagnosis)
Disability (functioning)
Activities Participation
(limitations) (restrictions)
Environmental Factors
(facilitators or obstacles)
Physical Social Attitudinal

23. The Medicalisaton of Madness
medical labelling of madness one of the most disabling obstacles to wellbeing and recovery
based on flimsy pseudo-science of psychiatry
“too much specious accuracy built on a false epistemology” (Ed Shneidman)
Shneidman proposes ‘psychache’ to counter the myth of depression as the cause of suicide:
“psychological pain that stems from thwarted or distorted psychological needs”

24. The Medicalisaton of Madness
No branch of knowledge can be more precise than its intrinsic subject matter will allow. I believe that we should eschew specious accuracy. I know that the current fetish is to have the appearance of precision – and the kudos and vast monies that often go with it – but that is not my style. Nowadays, the gambit used to make a field appear scientific is to redefine what is being discussed. The most flagrant current example is to convert the study of suicide, almost by sleight of hand, into a discussion of depression – two very different things.
Ed Shneidman

25. ‘Evidence based’ as Ideological Dogma
current ‘evidence based’ criteria are almost exclusively third-person (esp in medicine)
systematic and deliberate exclusion of first-person evidence is neither rational nor scientific
whenever you hear ‘evidence based’, please ask:
whose evidence?
what criteria are used for validity of evidence?
what gets excluded by these criteria?
Research and policy challenge:
How do we bring the (anecdotal) first-person evidence into research policy and practice in a robust way?

26. Special Mention on the Politics of Psychiatry
psychiatric disorders do not meet even medicine’s narrow definition for valid scientific evidence
at best, scientific status of ‘depression’ as a medical illness is as an hypothesis
Psychiatry’s impossible conflict of interest/duty:
as doctors, first duty is to the wellbeing of patients
as police, to protect society from mad people
Inevitable consequence:
widespread and common human rights violations

27. challenge ideology of ‘evidence based’ dogma
Where to from here?
challenge ideology of ‘evidence based’ dogma
restore validity of first-person knowledge
do not locate pathology entirely within the individual
communities/societies can be suicidal too!
attend to the whole person – physical, mental, emotional, relational, spiritual
recognise discrimination and human rights are core issues for all disabilities – UN Convention
likewise for building ‘healthy’ communities, the key to suicide prevention

28. Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities
not a Bill of Rights
takes effect Jan , full effect Jan
2007: all Victorian legislation to be reviewed
recognition of international human rights laws
emphasis on civil and political rights (rather than social, economic and cultural rights)
such as those denied us under Mental Health Act
Victorian government should include UN Convention in its human rights review of all disability legislation

29. Suicide Prevention First-Person Third-Person Singular I - intentional
IT - behavioural
Plural
Suicide
Prevention
WE - cultural
ITS - social

30. “It is the words that suicidal people say – about their psychological pain and their frustrated psychological needs – that make up the essential vocabulary of suicide. Suicide prevention can be everyone’s business”
Edwin S Shneidman, The Suicidal Mind

31. To The World - Adam Kemp
Alone I am as I sit at the lake’s edge throwing pebbles.
The colour of my soul is so black, my heart so heavy,
That even the pleasant sound of robins drifting from a nearby glade
Cannot soothe my feelings of bitterness and emptiness.
The warmth of the sun does not reach me as I hide behind a face of questionable character.
Who is this person who is always gay and nonchalant?
A second self perhaps … a creature born out of search for sanctuary
Simply a lifeless carcass to hide within during times of display.
Trust, faithfulness, compassion … words which no longer hold meaning for me,
Have been replaced with betrayal, isolation and worthlessness.
All blended together to create this dark and sour being which is my true self.

32. Surely there will come a time when the seed of life
To The World
I long for the day when I can feel love, happiness and a sense of purpose again
Surely there will come a time when the seed of life
Which has been planted and buried deep inside of me
Can blossom into something wonderful, something special, something joyous to behold,
Please nourish me … Let me grow … I yearn to live …
Adam Kemp, October 1995
In January 1996, Adam took his life, age 19.
(From Leaving Early by Bronwyn Donaghy)

33. We must at all times remember, That the decision to take your own life
Is as vast and complex and mysterious
As life itself.
Al Alvarez, The Savage God
May your psychache be minimal – Ed Shneidman