<![CDATA[Student Run Self Help - Events]]>Mon, 20 May 2013 01:59:01 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Remember Remember the 5th of November... SRSH's Annual Conference]]>Sun, 07 Aug 2011 15:58:24 GMThttp://www.srsh.co.uk/5/post/2011/08/remember-remember-the-5th-of-november-srshs-annual-conference.html
More Information:  http://srshconference.eventbrite.com/

We are delighted to invite you to SRSH's annual conference, to be held in Wadham College, University of Oxford, on Saturday 5th November 2011. 

SRSH is a charity that works to support university students to set up and run peer support groups for sudents at their university who suffer from eating disorders. The project is supported by B-eat, the leading UK charity for people with eating disorders, and has in this past year received funding from Comic Relief, the Welton Foundation and UnLtd. For more information about SRSH go to www.srsh.co.uk

This conference will provide a valuable opportunity to expand your knowledge about the nature of eating disorders and how they may best be treated. Our influential speakers will be able to give you an insight into the most up-to-date reseach. The conference is aimed at individuals who work with students in a university setting, as well as to students themselves and any other interested parties.

We very much hope that you will be able to join us. If you have any questions then please don't hesitate to contact Hannah Tickle - conference@srsh.co.uk  

Speakers (please note that this may change if circumstances beyond our control arise):

  • Deborah Waller - GP with special interest in Eating Disorders, member of the Oxford University Student Health Committee and member of the management committee for the Oxford University counselling service. 
  • Linette Whitehead - Consultant Clinical Psychologist wroking at Cotswold House Eating Disorder Service at the Warneford Hospital, Oxford, and Manager of the Community Eating Disorders Team.
  • Helen Sharpe - working in the Institute of Psychiatry, London, and designing a school-based prevention programme for eating disorders that will be piloted this October, with a particular interest on peer influences on the development of eating disorders. 
  • Lucy Serpell, Clinical Psychologist for the Eating Disorder Service in NE London, head of the Eating Disorder Resources website: edr.org.uk 
  • Felicity Cowdrey (University of Oxford), Doro Kluczniok (University of Oxford) and Radha Kothari (UCL), 3 PhD students who will give short presentions on their current research in the field of eating disorders
Other speakers TBC

Travel to Wadham College: http://www.wadham.ox.ac.uk/about-wadham/getting-to-wadham/finding-wadham.html

]]><![CDATA[Eating Disorders Awareness Week in Oxford ]]>Sun, 23 Jan 2011 14:16:48 GMThttp://www.srsh.co.uk/5/post/2011/01/eating-disorders-awareness-week-in-oxford.htmlWHAT:  Poster Oxford With Student Run Self Help
WHY:    Of nearly 300 students who have personally had an eating disorder or had a friend who has had an eating disorder, less than 50% felt they knew where to turn for support. SRSH can offer the support that they needed.
WHEN:  Eating Disorders Awareness Week (21st of February)
HOW:   Create an army of students who believe that things can be different: we can improve the lives of students affected by eating disorders.
  1. Meet the SRSH team at 5.30pm on the 15th of February (a Tuesday) in the Lodge of Brasenose College.
  2. Collect a handful of posters.
  3. Put your name down to target one of our recommended locations
All we are asking is an hour of people's time. One hour won't get anyone very far, but if you can give one hour of your time to visiting various haunts in oxford and putting up a handful of posters, it is a start. If we can get ten people involved, that is 10 hours, if we can get 50 people involved, that is 500 hours...

So put the date in your diary & tell everyone you know because we CAN make a difference.
visit www.srsh.co.uk for more information about the project]]><![CDATA[Eating Orders: Gender, Eating Disorders and the Future of Flesh]]>Sat, 06 Nov 2010 14:02:56 GMThttp://www.srsh.co.uk/5/post/2010/11/eating-orders-gender-eating-disorders-and-the-future-of-flesh.htmlPicture
Okinaga Room, Wadham College 6pm
Tuesday the 16th November.

Join a panel discussion organised as part of the Gender Equality Festival to talk discuss the issue of Eating Disorders
More information: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=155668704471441  

Some thoughts on gender and Eating Disorder:

 Self-immolation And Hunger¦Naomi Wolf

There is a disease spreading. It taps on the shoulder America’s firstborn sons, its best and brightest. At its touch, they turn away from food. Their bones swell out from receding flesh. Shadows invade their faces. They walk slowly, with the effort of old men. A white spittle forms on their lips. They can swallow only pellets of bread, and a little thin milk. First tens, then hundreds, then thousands, until among the most affluent families, one young son in five is stricken. Many are hospitalized, many die....
The boys of the ghetto die young, and America has lived with that. But these boys are the golden ones to whom the reins of the world are to be lightly tossed: the captain of the Princeton football team, the head of the Berkeley debating club, the editor of the Harvard Crimson. Then a quarter of the Dartmouth rugby team falls ill; then a third of Yale’s secret societies. The heirs, the cream, the fresh delegates to the nation’s forum selectively waste away.

The American disease spreads eastward. It strikes young men at the Sorbonne, in London’s Inns of Court, in the administration of the Hague, in the Bourse, in the universities of Edinburgh and Salamanca. They grow thin and still more thin. They can hardly speak aloud. They lose their libido, and can no longer make an effort to joke or argue. When they run or swim, they look appalling: buttocks collapsed, tailbones protruding, knees knocked together, ribs splayed in a shelf that stretches their papery skin. There is no medical reason.

The disease mutates again. Across America, it becomes apparent that for every well-born living skeleton there are at least three other young men, also bright lights, who do something just as strange. Once they have swallowed their steaks and wine, now they hide away, to thrust their fingers down their throats and spew out all the nourishment in them. They wander back, shaking and pale. Eventually they arrange their lives so that they can spend hours each day hunched over like that, their highly trained minds telescoped around two shameful holes: mouth, toilet; toilet, mouth.

What is happening to our fine young me, in their brush cuts and khaki trousers? It hurts to look at them. At their expense-paid lunches, they hide their medallions of veal under lettuce leaves. Secretly, they purge. They vomit after matriculation banquets and after tailgate parties at the Game. The men’s room in the Oyster Bar reeks with it.

How would America react to the mass self-immolation by hunger of its favourite sons? How would Western Europe absorb the export of such a disease? One would expect an emergency response: crisis task forces convened in congressional hearing rooms, unscheduled alumni meetings, the best experts money can hire, cover stories in news and magazines, blame and counter-blame, bulletins, warnings, symptoms, updates; an epidemic blazoned in boldface red. The sons of privilege are the future; the future is committing suicide.

Of course this is all happening right now, only with a gender difference. The institution that shelter and promote these diseases are hibernating. The public conscience are fast asleep. The world is not coming to an end because the cherished child in five who “chooses” to die slowly is a girl.

Up to one tenth of young American women, up to one fifth of women students in the US are locked into one-woman hunger camps. When they fall, there are no memorial services, no intervention through awareness programs, no formal messages from their schools and the colleges that the society prefers its young women to eat and thrive rather than sicken and die.
]]><![CDATA[The Silent Global Epidemic: Time to start ending the silence]]>Sun, 31 Oct 2010 18:54:38 GMThttp://www.srsh.co.uk/5/post/2010/10/the-silent-global-epidemic.htmlJoin Dr Tine Van Bortel in Lecture room 11, Brasenose college at 5.30pm this Tuesday (2nd November) to discuss the Silent Global Epidemic.

BBC News (Sept 2009) The World Health Organisation predicts that within 20 years more people will be affected by depression than any other health problem...
Professor Martin Prince, professor of epidemiological psychiatry at KCL, estimates the combined costs of depression in the UK amount to £12 billion a year, or around 1% gross national product.

 

“Mental Illness: Stigma of Silence"  In an article in The Huffington Post (October 21, 2009), award-winning actress Glenn Close talks about the stigma of mental illness. She writes, “There has, in fact, been a lot of depression and alcoholism in my family and, traditionally, no one ever spoke about it. It just wasn’t done. The stigma is toxic.” Despite progress with medicine and therapy to treat mental illness, the social stigma remains intact.

 

“Suicide – the Silent Crisis”
A recent article in the Boston Globe (April 15, 2009) advocated a more open dialogue about suicide, recognizing it as a major cause of preventable death. Ninety percent of suicides can be prevented, according to the American Association of Suicidology. “Suicide takes more lives than homicide and HIV/AIDS combined, yet it is shrouded in secrecy and blame for the dead, the injured, and their loved ones,” said Ellen Connorton, founder of the Massachusetts Coalition for Suicide Prevention.

“Employers Could Save Billions by Reducing Stigma of Mental Illness”
According to a recent article published by Canwest News Service (January, 14, 2009 ), the military in Canada has achieved success in treating mental illness among soldiers and removing some of the stigma associated with it. Bill Wilkerson, the Chairman of the Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Addiction and Mental Health, recently held a meeting of representatives of some of Canada’s top businesses to learn how the military and Veterans Affairs made managing and treating mental health a priority for the armed forces. Wilkerson feels that if the military can take some of the stigma out of mental illness, so can private employers. Taking action could save them billions of dollars.  According to the forum, the costs of mental disorders now exceed 50 billion dollars a year in Canada.
]]><![CDATA[Help us run the SRSH Project]]>Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:57:09 GMThttp://www.srsh.co.uk/5/post/2010/07/help-us-run-the-srsh-project.htmlWe are opening a highly competitive opportunity to work with SRSH to support our growth and development. For all of the positions outlined below, you will be fully supported. To apply please email recruitment@srsh.co.uk.

Please select "read more" for specific details on all the positions avaliable.
Key Group Liaison

We are looking for a few volunteers to get involved in maintaining communication with our groups. We run skype meetings regularly with groups to touch base and check that all is well. The Group Liaisons would be responsible for scheduling and running these meetings. Each Group Liaison would also be responsible for staying in touch with a few groups. To take on this role you need good communication skills, enthusiasm and a pinch of passion. We need you to keep our group volunteers enthusiastic, committed and happy! This role puts you right in the centre of our operation, ensuring that existing groups are running smoothly. This makes it perfect for a bit of hands on experience from the comfort of your own room. You would also be able to schedule meetings, enabling you to work around other commitments.

Website Manager

As it says on the tin! We need to make sure that we stay on top of our internet communication. This means checking our website is up to date, contacting groups to ensure that the details they have provided are accurate and generally making sure that the pages are attractive. We are working towards a website that jumps out at you as well as being factual and interesting. To develop this further and maintain this we are looking for a volunteer to help out. We use Weebly as a webhosting platform – this means that while programming knowledge is very welcome, it is by no means necessary! With a bit of patience anyone can get the hang of how we do our online communication. We just need a volunteer who is committed, organised and happy to make their own decisions on a project.

Research and Development Manager

Want a bit of experience conducing qualitative analysis and survey studies? This is really what this role is. While it will bring you into the SRSH world (a fantastic place to be volunteering!) and will let you really contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the national situation regarding students with eating disorders, the practice this role will offer is the most valuable. We already conduct a range of evaluation surveys. We need someone who would like access to the data from these to play around and see what they are telling us. You would also be welcome to launch your own surveys, change our existing ones and generally go out there to find answers to questions about student mental health. You need to be interested in research to do this however our project founder is a psychology DPhil student and more than happy to spend some time showing you the ropes and improving your skill set.

Publicity

We are looking for some talkative, vibrant and passionate individuals to help get the message of SRSH out there. This could be by writing regular pieces about SRSH or mental health in general to be published in student papers or online blogs. You may want to go on local radio to talk about the project. Perhaps you have a graphic eye and could develop our publicity from an aesthetic point of view. If you think you can write, draw, shout or generally get people’s attention, please think about getting involved. Mental health is a neglected area, the more noise we can make the better!

Secretary

Yes, we want one of these two. As our committee grows it is important for us to have a logical and sensible individual to make some notes and attempt to organise us all! If you think you could help out – it would be much appreciated.

Our Knowledge Bank

A bit wanky we know, but we really do love brain storms. As we develop we know that the more voices we listen to, the stronger we will be. If you would like to discuss ideas about mental health and improving access to support or reducing stigma, your brain would be much appreciated! We will be running regular committee meetings to discuss our development and your role would be to come along and bounce ideas around with us. Sounds a bit simplistic we know – but it is incredibly helpful!

]]><![CDATA[Working with Depression In Oxford]]>Sun, 06 Jun 2010 00:56:47 GMThttp://www.srsh.co.uk/5/post/2010/06/working-with-depression-in-oxford.htmlFollowing requests from various groups and individuals we are looking into setting up a student run self help group to support students struggling with depression or anxiety. This group would work along the same frame work as our groups for eating disorders. If you are interested in this, how the project would work or have ideas for how we ought be developing such a program, please get in touch - nicola@srsh.co.uk.
]]><![CDATA[Renewing Enough]]>Sun, 06 Jun 2010 00:54:48 GMThttp://www.srsh.co.uk/5/post/2010/06/renewing-enough.htmlWe have recruited a new team of volunteers to take over running enough in the autumn term. The group will run along the same lines as it is currently working - there will just be new faces. If you have any questions, please get in touch.
]]><![CDATA[Ignorance, Prejudice and Discrimination: How do we change perspective]]>Sun, 06 Jun 2010 00:50:12 GMThttp://www.srsh.co.uk/5/post/2010/06/first-post.htmlDate: Wednesday, 09 June 2010
Time:19:30 - 21:00
Location:Saskatchewan Room, Exeter College

Description  People with direct experience of mental health problems have long been aware of the impact of discrimination against people with a psychiatric diagnosis. We are less clear of how discrimination works or how it can be tackled. As a society we have spent millions of pounds trying to tackle stigma and discrimination without a clear model of how change can be achieved. Yet despite all our efforts and all the services we deploy, outcomes for severe mental illness in western society remain worse than in some developing countries.

Professor Graham Thornicroft will speak about the evidence which highlights the impact that discrimination has and explore how we can build a robust model for change.

Carrie-Ann Wade-Williams, communications manager for the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Mental Health Trust will be speaking about the work she does and the importance of involving services uses in development plans for mental health services.
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