I can’t believe this is our last day in Ireland. It’s been such an amazing experience and I’m very sad to leave this beautiful  country.

Yesterday was the last day of our attendance at the conference. Overall, I found myself having mixed feelings about how I feel towards the conference and the presentations. There were some presentations that I absolutely loved and found myself mesmerized by. Particularly Matilda’s on intersectionality and trans issues, Jo’s on nonverbal communication, and Nell’s on alternatives to cohersion. They all presented on topics that I’m interested in learning more about, and presented in a way that was engaging and easy to follow. I really liked how Matilda compared her presentation to dating, which I thought was funny. I also liked how Jo had a video and Nell showed the audience the pills she takes for her epilepsy.

On the other hand, I found myself getting very frustrated with some of the conference’s reoccurring themes and lack of bluntness at times. In my opinion, it appeared that a consistent impression presenters were giving off was that psychiatrists are bad. After a couple of days of consistently hearing this, I got to a point where it was hard for me to physically be in the room because I was so sick of presenters making that impression on the audience. I don’t believe psychiatrists are bad. In fact, I think if you get a psychiatrist that you click with, and puts you on a medication that matches the chemical your body is lacking, it can change a patient’s life for the better. I can also understand how someone can have a horrendous experience with a psychiatrist, like some of the presenters at the conference have had. However, I felt like they were creating a stereotype that all psychiatrists evil people, which I thought was ironic because the conference was pushing towards eradicating negative stereotypes for people with psychosocial disabilities, so how is it justifiable to put a negative label on another group of people? It just seems hypocritical to me.

I also never felt like there was never a realistic and practical solution given to what you do in a time of crisis for someone with a psychosocial disability, which was a reoccurring question I know Christina had throughout the conference. Some presenters said that peer support groups were a good idea, but to me that seems ridiculous and comical. In my mind I picture a crisis situation as someone is about to commit suicide, like they are standing on the bridge and are about to jump. How does it make sense to use a peer support group in that situation? What do you say to the individual, come down and let’s go to one peer support group and send you on your way and everything will be all better? That’s just so unrealistic to me. I do think a peer support group can be beneficial before and after a crisis situation, and I do think those are good options that should be available to individuals. I really wish the presenters put more thought into considering psychotherapy because I think it has a lot of good benefits without taking away individuals’ liberties.