MHM 2024 - Invisible Illness and Chronic Health Toolkit - An Education & Design Workshop

Join us for our second event and interactive workshop to develop a toolkit for understanding invisible illnesses including a special videocast with Professor Arthur Frank (University of Calgary) and Danielle Spencer (Columbia University) with Elizabeth Haris (UNSW).

Many individuals struggle with chronic health conditions, illness and pain that are often misunderstood or overlooked. What are the implications of this non-recognition of these lived conditions, and how to does impact on about professional relationships, workplace organisation and personal experience.

By opening out questions around these experiences, the workshop will aim to consider:
*How do we understand the lived experiences of these conditions?
*What are the tools that we need to educate and resource different individuals, communities and workplaces to create more supportive environments?

These questions and much more will be explored throughout this workshop.

We encourage staff living with invisible and chronic health conditions and staff who wish to learn more on how to support individuals living with these experiences to attend.

Featuring Professor Arthur Frank:

Arthur Frank is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology, University of Calgary, and has been Professor II at VID Specialized University, Norway. He writes and lectures on illness experience, narrative, and ethics of care. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Arthur has spent his career studying three interrelated issues: how people come to think of themselves as the persons they believe they are (the problem of the subject); how people understand, or fail to understand, each other (the problem of intersubjectivity); and the problem of what people believe is right to do, when the stakes on action are high (the problem of ethics). He studies these three questions with particular respect to stories and narrative, which he believes enables humans to have what they know as experiences. His particular concern is stories of illness and suffering, and how those who suffer can benefit from telling their own stories and hearing others’ stories.

Featuring Danielle Spencer:

Danielle Spencer is the author of Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity (Oxford University Press, 2021) and co-author of Perkins-Prize-winning The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (OUP, 2017). A faculty member in the Columbia University Narrative Medicine Graduate Program, her scholarly and creative work appears in diverse outlets, from The Lancet to Ploughshares, and she is the Editor of the Anthem Press Advances in Human Medicines book series. Formerly artist/musician David Byrne’s Art Director, Spencer holds a B.A. from Yale University, an M.S. in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and has been awarded fellowships at MacDowell and Yaddo. Lives in New York city.

MODERATORS

Associate Professor Mary Zournazi
Associate Professor Mary Zournazi is a film maker, author and scholar. Mary teaches in the sociology program at UNSW Sydney, and she is concerned with the documentation of social justice issues, questions of hope and approaches to health and well-being in public language and communication. Recently, she has rehabilitated from long covid, and she hopes to establish new parameters for understanding long term health issues in everyday life and in different social and political contexts and beyond. In particular, she is publishing two papers on the topic: ‘Phenomenology of Vertigo: Brain Trauma, Neuroplasticity and Long Covid’ and ‘Calling the Double-bind: cultural forgetting and the challenges of Long Covid’. She is working on a book on recovery and convalescence in contemporary life.

Tamra Flewell-Smith
Tamra is a UNSW Professional Staff Member and Co-Champion on the ADA EDI Committee for Wellbeing and Mental Health. She has lived with chronic pain from aged 3, and was diagnosed with endometriosis by the age of 30. Tamra is passionate about destigmatising chronic illness, creating a more inclusive culture of understanding and empathy, both professionally and personally, free of shame and unconscious bias.

Elizabeth Haris
Elizabeth Haris recently completed her PhD at UNSW investigating the neural mechanisms underlying posttraumatic stress disorder. She is now a Research Fellow at Orygen and the Centre for Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne. Her work focuses on understanding the transdiagnostic  contribution of trauma in neuropsychiatric disorders in youth and in delineating the neurobiological mechanisms underlying psychological disruptions of the self. Alongside her interest and research in the mental health space, she is also a passionate advocate for individuals affected with invisible physical illnesses, having lived with a chronic health condition for most of her life.

Register via Humanitix before 9am, 17 October 2024.

This event is organised by the UNSW Health Promotion Unit / UNSW Mental Health Network and the UNSW Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture's Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Wellbeing Champions.

Content context: Our mental health is a part of what makes us who we are. Conversations about our mental health can sometimes be difficult but you don’t need to face it alone. Find the support you need to deal with what’s going on in your mind through services like UNSW’s Psychology & Wellness, or through a range of free helplines.  

Mental Health Month at UNSW is coordinated by the UNSW Health Promotion Unit in partnership with students and staff across UNSW. We aim to encourage the UNSW community to build health literacy, capacity skills and lifelong positive changes that will improve their overall health and wellbeing beyond their time at UNSW. Find more events on the website.