
- Principal investigator in projects aimed to evaluate innovative approaches in mental health, such as Open Dialogue, Recovery Houses, and co-produced experimental centres. These interventions are based on the assumption «nothing about us without us», promoted by the international movement of mental health services users. Her main research activity aims at understanding and evaluating the outcomes of these interventions, with a focus on the analysis of cognitive, emotional and social processes underlying the recovery of people with experience of severe mental health issues.

- Jaakko is a founder of Open Dialogue. He is an advanced specialist level family therapist; he also works as a trainer in psychotherapy. His main interests are in developing and analyzing family- and social network-centered practices in the most severe psychiatric crises, such as psychosis and depression. His research has been focused both on analyzing the effectiveness of open dialogues in psychosis and depression, and on developing the analysis of dialogues in family therapy and network therapy sessions.


- He is director of the postgraduate program in Open Dialogue at his University and he also teaches Norway’s first post-graduate program in mindfulness. He is lead trainer for the UK peer-supported Open Dialogue Project together with psychiatrist Russell Razzaque and family therapist Val Jackson. He is co-investigator for the ODDESSI Open Dialogue trial in the UK.

- She is responsible and coordinator of the Project Management Office at The Institute for Cognitive Science and Technologies of the National Research Council of Italy. The Office is in charge of active contracts/agreements and external funds for research projects. It supports researchers in preparing and submitting research proposals, in drafting and supervision of active contracts/agreements and their negotiations, and it carries on the management and financial reports of the running research projects.

- As a freelance worker he developed appropriate teaching practices for in-house-trainings of multiprofessional teams on the Open Dialogue approach. He is also a consultant for the structural development of psychiatric organizations. He has a long experience in the training of many teams, mostly in Germany and Switzerland. He has several other interests and experiences in treatment approaches for people with psychotic experiences, from pharmacological to human rights aspects. Because of all this, he would like to introduce his somewhat eccentric view and expertise.

- He is working as a clinical psychologist at Keropudas hospital where Open Dialogue approach originated. Alongside his everyday work, he is researching mental health services in Western Lapland catchment area and long-term outcomes of the Open Dialogue approach in the treatment of first-episode psychosis at the group and individual level.

- He was a founding leader of the Collaborative Pathway and Open Dialogue programs at Advocates, Inc, starting in 2011, and has been engaged continuously in the provision of OD services since that time. He is a certified Open Dialogue practitioner, having completed two years of training with Dr. Mary Olson at the Institute for Dialogic Practice. In 2016, their team published the first feasibility study of adapting OD to the US healthcare environment. He is very interested in promoting the broader implementation of Open Dialogue as a progressive, holistic, person-centered psychiatric practice.

- He is a District medical officer in the city of Skien, Norway. He has also served as a senior medical adviser for the South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority. He is disturbed by the amount of suffering due to mental problems, and how current treatment often fails. In search of better strategies, he seeks to promote Open Dialog as a means of understanding and as a tool for change.

As the founder of Enik recovery college, in partnership with Tom Verspoor, he is a peer leader in the Netherlands and abroad. Enik RC is a 100% peer-run, self-help peer support environment in the Netherlands. Martijn Kole is also as a independent consultant co-founder and partner of the (blauwepaardnetwerk) Blue Horse network, a network for fostering change in society and Psychiatry.




- She served as Executive Director of the Association of Oregon Community Mental Health Programs before taking the helm of EXCELLENCE. She has worked extensively in mental health and addictions policy, leadership and management, health care financing and political advocacy. As a Community Mental Health Therapist, Adolescent Program Director and Clinical Supervisor, she brings experience in all aspects of community mental health. She has a BA in Theatre and Dance and an MS in counseling from Portland State University and a PhD in Education focusing on Social Public Policy and Leadership from the University of Oregon.

- In 2001, she was awarded a Fulbright to do research on Open Dialogue in Finland while teaching at the University of Jyväskylä. From 2011-2017, she co-led the first US Open Dialogue study at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, USA. Since 2011, she has focused on developing dialogical training and research programs in the US. She is also a senior Open Dialogue trainer/supervisor in the UK, the Netherlands, Japan, and Mexico, and the lead author of the “Key Elements of Dialogic Practice in Open Dialogue” (2014), which has been translated into 11 languages. She published various papers on Open Dialogue and Dialogic Practice, including the first autoethnographic study in Family Process (2015).

- He is working as a (critical) psychiatrist, leading a home treatment team at Hospital Rüdersdorf in Brandenburg/ Germany. In addition, he is in charge of a research team on mental health service research, aiming at evaluating psychiatric services and alternatives to them. Within this context, he increasingly uses participatory and collaborative approaches and methods.


- He initiated the first training in Open Dialogue in the UK National Health Service in 2015, which runs to this date. He has published several research papers on Open Dialogue and related practices in international peer reviewed journals and he is an initiator and Principal Investigator of the UK ODDESSI trial.

- He has been trained as a psychologist in the field of economics and finance and he researches the psychology of money, family businesses and wealth. Together with Raffaella Pocobello, he offers scientific consultancy and evaluation of projects in innovative mental health services. They found an interesting field of research on the cross-section between mental health services, organizational studies and the impact of economic conditions and money on it.

- Chair of the Board of the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care;
- Member of the board of the American Association of Community psychiatrists on the advisory board of Mad In America Continuing Education;
- Associate of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal;
- Editor-in-chief of Community Mental Health Journal and editor of the book, Critical Psychiatry: Controversies and Clinical Implications.

- Currently, she is amidst certification in the International Certificate in Collaborative-Dialogic Practices (ICCP) through Taos and Houston-Galveston Institutes, and she holds a certificate to train and supervise couple and family dialogical practices recognized under Finnish law (valtioneuvoston asetus terveydenhuollon ammattihenkilöistä annetun asetuksen muuttamisesta 1120/2010) trained by Jaakko Seikkula, PhD through Dialogic Partners and the University of Jyväskylä (2018.)


- She started working at the psychiatric services in Interlaken, Switzerland. She attended the first Open Dialogue training in Switzerland in 2015/16 and she helped to spread the word on this approach in the German-speaking area. She collaborates with the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal and works within the Expert Committee for Psychiatric Drugs of the German Society for Social Psychiatry. In January 2017, she co-founded the first trialogue specific to the topic of reducing and stopping neuroleptics, based in Bern.

As a mother, Regina did not agree with the status quo of mental health treatment in Poland. She was convinced that “whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon... must inevitably come to pass!”. This attitude led her to think that there must be better treatment somewhere in Europe in the XXI century.
As Regina discovered the Open Dialogue in 2011, she decided to transfer this approach to Poland, not alone but with a team of people oriented to mental health system change.
First results:
- In 2018, Open Dialogue became “the heart” of the Community Mental Health Centers created in three counties of Poland and one district of Warsaw.
- In the same year, the Government announced a pilot of the mental health Reform based on moving mental health services from institutions to local society;
- In 2021, Regina was appointed by Mental Health Europe as one of the female heroes of Europe’s mental health;
- Until XII/2021 there are 400 people graduated from Open Dialogue courses.

- She is currently Head of Partnerships and Programs at the Open Dialogue Centre, a philanthropic not-for-profit committed to transforming the landscape of mental health services in Australia. She has a key role in supporting services in adopting the Open Dialogue philosophy and values within their existing models of care and ensuring long term sustainability. She works closely with organisations to support them in considering the necessary organisational factors that support transformation to more person-centred humanistic approaches of care.