31 August
1 September
2 September - Open Day
3 September

Thursday, 31 August 2023

14.00 – 15.00
Conference registration
15.00 – 15.30
Welcome and introduction to the Meeting (plenary)
15.30 – 17.30
Preparing the Workshops (up to 6 breakout sessions)
17.30 – 18.00
Discussion and closing session (plenary)
20.00 – 22.00
Welcome dinner at the TH Roma – Carpegna Palace Hotel

Friday, 1 September 2023 – Clinical Day

9.00 – 9.30
Key lecture (plenary)
Jaakko SeikkulaWhy Does Dialogue Cure? How to Approach the Most Serious Crises
9.30 – 9.45
Q&A
9.45 – 10.15
Key lecture (plenary)
Tom ArnkilCo-generating Dialogical Space, anticipating steps forward
10.15 – 10.30
Q&A
10.30 – 11.00
Plan of the Workshops
11.00 – 11.30
Coffee break
11.30 – 13.00
Workshops (Session #1, up to 6 breakout sessions), including:
  1. Parachute NYC- 5 years working with dialogical network meetings in New York
    with Petra Hohn, Ruthie Israeli, and Peter Stastny
  2. Open Dialogue and Reflecting Processes when Violence Happens Against Children: The Practice and Experience of a Multi-Agency, Cross-Professional Consultation Team in Tromsø Covering a Northern Norwegian County
    with Anna Margrete Flåm
  3. How to Create Collaborative Training Processes
    with Eija-Liisa Rautiainen, Mia Kurtti, and Kari Valtanen
13.00 – 14.00
Lunch
14.00 – 15.30
Workshops - Session #2:
  1. Interview drug-free unit team in Tromsø + reflections (Proposal #4, Magnus)
  2. Is it OK to be me when I don't know who I am. How expectations can make it harder to be me (Proposal #1, Annette)
  3. How to work dialogically with people who ask for diagnoses – neurodiversity (Proposal #6, Kari)
15.30 – 15.45
Break
15.45 – 17.00
Reporting from the Workshops and Closing Session (plenary)

Saturday, 2 September 2023 – Open Day

Some talks will be in English and some in Italian, and real-time simultaneous translation will be provided in both languages.
If you are interested in joining the conference only for the "Open Day," please note that a reduced ticket (100 €) is still available to participate online.

08.30 – 09.00
Open Day Registration

Session 1 — Psychosis and History of the Conference

Chaired by Raffaella Pocobello
9.00 – 10.00
Introduction
Raffaella Pocobello and Cristiano CastelfranchiConference Opening (ITA)
Maria Grazia Cogliati DezzaRemembering Franco Rotelli (ITA)
Kermit Cole and Hannah LingleyOpen Excellence (ENG)
10.00 - 10.20
Anders Lindseth - The psychosis network meetings: Origin, development and future challenges (ENG)
10.20 - 10.40
Jaakko Seikkula - Open Dialogue for Psychosis (ENG)
10.40 - 11.00
Q&A
11.00 - 11.30
Coffee break

Session 2 — Dialogical practice & Human Rights: Lessons learned and next steps

Chaired by Jimmy Ciliberto
11.30 - 11.50
Mia Kurtti and Tomi BergströmTransforming the human (mental health) services – possibilities and challenges (ENG)
11.50 - 12.10
Magnus P. HaldThe Drug-Free Treatment Unit in Norway (ENG)
12.10 - 12.30
Giovanni RossiNo Restraint services in Italy (ITA)
12.30 - 13.00
Q&A
13.00 - 14.00
Lunch

Session 3 — Implementing Open Dialogue in different contexts

Chaired by Anna Paola Marchetti
14.00 – 14.20
Raffaella PocobelloDescribing OD services: results from the international survey (ENG)
14.20 - 14.40
Andrea Zwicknagl and Sirkka MullisPeer involvement in the Interlaken team – when lived and learned experience find common ground (Switzerland) (ENG)
14.40 - 15.00
Regina BisikiewiczThe role of family members' organizations in the development of OD in Poland (ENG)
15.00 - 15.15
Break
15.15 - 15.35
Raffaele Barone and Elisa Gulino Transforming a whole service step by step- Caltagirone (Italy) (ITA)
15.35 - 15.55
Pina Caloro Working together with social services - Pavullo (Italy) (ITA)
15.55 - 16.45
Q&A
16.45 - 17.00
Pina Ridente Closing and reflections (ENG)
20.00 - 22.00
Gala Dinner at the TH Roma – Carpegna Palace Hotel*
*Gala Dinner is included only in the ticket for the full conference

Sunday, 3 September 2023 – Research Day

9.30 - 10.15
Updates on ongoing research projects
Russell RazzaqueODDESSI Project
Raffaella PocobelloHOPEnDialogue Project
10.15 - 10.30
Q&A
10.30 - 11.00
Plan of the Workshops
11.00 - 11.30
Coffee Break
11.30 - 13.00
Workshops - Session #3:
  1. Patterns of recovery and patterns of chronification in so called psychotic crises
    with Alberto Fergusson and Anders Lindseth
  2. Dialogical Practice and Human Capacity Building
    with Líam Mac Gabhann and Sabine Dick
  3. Envisioning a Future where Open Dialogue Thrives
    with Mia Kurtti, Jaakko Seikkula, Louisa Putnam,and Elina Lohonen
    Facilitated byTom Arnkil and Jimmy Ciliberto
  4. Reflections about a failed dialogue (Proposal #3, Rolf) + Reflection about when it's hard to listen how to create new spaces when it's needed what is the impact of OD on professionals and peers (Proposal #11, Andrea)
13.00 - 14.00
Lunch
14.00 - 15.30
Workshops - Session #4
  1. The importance of embodied sharing rather than therapeutic practice (Proposal #13, Jaakko) + Human Being and its Discontents: Dialogicity and Humor in Open Dialogue with Kermit
  2. OD with people who have been “chronically ill patients” (Proposal #12, Wojtek)
15.30 - 16.15
Reporting from the Workshops and Closing Session (plenary)

Raffaella Pocobello

Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. Researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Science and Technologies, National Research Council, Italy.
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 Seikkula

Professor of psychotherapy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
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.

Anders Lindseth

Professor Emeritus for practical philosophy at the Centre for Practical Knowledge, Nord University, Norway.
Until 2000 professor at the Department for Health Care Research, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tromsø. Now teaching philosophical practice at Vienna University. Participating as practical philosopher at the annual International Meetings on the Treatment of Psychosis since 1997. Became honorary member of the Cuban Psychiatric Society in March 2019.

Russell Razzaque

Consultant Psychiatrist, Associate Medical Director and Director of Research and Development at North East London NHS Foundation Trust; Honorary Senior Lecturer at University College London; Visiting Professor at London South Bank University
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.

Mia Kurtti

Psychiatric nurse MSc, trainer and supervisor in Family and Couple therapy and Open Dialogue
She has been working in public mental health services in Finland for over two decades, using therapeutic and dialogic approaches in her work with individuals and their families and networks. She also has management experience in creating service delivery systems that support dialogic practice. She has been a trainer on many international training programs that aim to generate dialogic and collaborative practice in mental health and social services. Questions about social equality and justice are important to her. One of Mia’s aims in training processes is to open and expand the dialogue to increase people’s creativity and resourcefulness. In her role as a trainer, she is keen to emphasise and invite people who work in mental health settings to explore their own life narratives and the impact that these stories and their values have on their current professional practice.

Open Dialogue is one of the Good Practices in the World Health Organization`s “Mental health crisis services: promoting person-centred and rights-based approaches,” where Mia worked with the WHO authorities in creating the publication.

Tomi Bergström

Head psychologist and postdoctoral researcher
Dr. Tomi Bergström works as a head psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at the Wellbeing Service County of Lapland and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Psychology at the University of Jyväskylä. He has worked as a clinical psychologist at Keropudas Hospital, where the Open Dialogue approach originated. Alongside his clinical work, he has been researching the long-term outcomes of the Open Dialogue approach at the group and individual levels.

Magnus P. Hald

Senior consultant psychiatrist with The Drug Free Treatment Unit, University Hospital of Northern Norway in Tromsoe, Norway.
For more than 10 years, until 2018, he was Director of the Division of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the University Hospital. He has long been interested in the development of a network-oriented approach to mental health challenges, based on ideas that have come from his working with “reflecting teams” and “reflective processes”. This approach, together with a recovery oriented perspective, has been central in the development of the treatment program in the Drug Free Treatment Unit.

Giovanni Rossi

President of the Association “Club SPDC No Restraint”. Psychiatrist and psychotherapist
Giovanni Rossi participated in the closure of the psychiatric hospital in Mantua and the planning and implementation of mental health services in Mantua and Modena. Editor of the radio station Rete 180 "La voce di chi sente le voci" ("The voice of those who hear voices") and promoter of the mental health radio movement. Involved in advocacy and evaluative research in mental health services, Giovanni Rossi was a WHO consultant for Latin America and the Caribbean and a professor of social psychiatry at the University of Modena and Reggio nell'Emilia.

Andrea Zwicknagl

Peer support specialist in Switzerland and she is part of the Swiss Hearing Voices Network.
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.

Regina Bisikiewicz

Founder of Polish Institute of Open Dialogue and partner to Leadership Management International for Poland.
Coach and facilitator of organizational culture change. For 30 years, she has been fulfilling professional roles with endless enthusiasm.
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.

Raffaele Barone

Psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Director of the MDSM1 Calatino (Catania, Italy)
Raffaele Barone is a psychiatrist and group-analyst psychotherapist. He is the director of the Module 1 of the Mental Health Department (MDSM 1) Calatino, Asp Catania, Catania.
Raffaele Barone is a trainer and supervisor in psychotherapy specialisation schools and Mental Health Departments. He is a board member of the International Network of Democratic Therapeutic Communities (INDTC).

Elisa Gulino

Chief psychologist and psychotherapist
Elisa Gulino is a psychologist and a systemic-relational psychotherapist. She is the chief psychologist and Open Dialogue Coordinator at the Module 1 of the Mental Health Department (MDSM 1) Calatino, Asp Catania, Italy.

Cristiano Castelfranchi

Associate researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Science and Technologies, National Research Council, Italy.
The guiding aim of his research is to study autonomous goal-directed behavior as the root of all social phenomena, at the same time highlighting how social life shapes individual cognition.

Jimmy Ciliberto

Psychologist and psychotherapist
Jimmy Ciliberto was trained in Milano (ITA) in Systemic Relational Psychotherapy and in Espoo and Jyväskylä (FIN) in Dialogical Practice in Couple and Family Therapy. Nowadays, he works both as a private practitioner in Milano and as a member of Pantigliate's Minors and Families Service, a municipality in Milano’s Metropolitan Area. Furthermore, he runs trainings and Supervisions in Mental Health Departments, Social Services and Psychotherapy Trainings all over Italy.

Anna Paola Marchetti

Psychiatrist and psychotherapist
Until 2020, Anna Paola Marchetti was head of the "Rehabilitation and home support Program" and the Open Dialogue team in the Public Mental Health Service in Turin, Italy. She is an OD trainer and supervisor.

Magnus P. Hald

Senior consultant psychiatrist with The Drug Free Treatment Unit, University Hospital of Northern Norway in Tromsoe, Norway.
For more than 10 years, until 2018, he was Director of the Division of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the University Hospital. He has long been interested in the development of a network-oriented approach to mental health challenges, based on ideas that have come from his working with “reflecting teams” and “reflective processes”. This approach, together with a recovery oriented perspective, has been central in the development of the treatment program in the Drug Free Treatment Unit.

Hannah Lingley


Vice Chairman of the Open Excellence Board of Directors
Hannah Lingley is passionate about improving mental health outcomes; her experience includes ten years of business development and partnerships, financial services, startups and fin-tech. Hannah specializes in furthering go-to-market strategies, as well as social media, and fundraising.

Kermit Cole


Board Chairman for Open Excellence, founding editor at Mad in America, as well as a practicing couples and family therapist
Inspired by Open Dialogue, Kermit Cole works as part of a team and consults with couples and families that have members identified as patients. A former film-maker, he has undergraduate and master’s degrees in psychology from Harvard University, as well as an MFT degree from the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia. He is a doctoral candidate with the Taos Institute and the Free University of Brussels.

Pina Ridente


Psychiatrist, OD trainer and supervisor
Pina Ridente is a psychiatrist with over 40 years of experience in the Trieste MHD, with specific expertise in deinstitutionalization, psychosocial rehabilitation, supported housing and personal budgeting, co-production, women's mental health.

During her career, she has contributed, as an expert advisor to WHO and as part of WHO's support to governments, to several projects for the deinstitutionalisation of psychiatric hospitals and the establishment of community services. Currently retired from her position as Director of a CMHC of the Trieste MHD, she works as an expert private consultant in international cooperation projects for the dissemination of good practices of deinstitutionalisation and organisation of community services.

As a certified OD trainer and supervisor, (Degree "Dialogical Approaches in Couple and Family Therapy" at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland) she is currently involved in open dialogue training courses organised in Italy and abroad.

Sirkka Mullis


Project manager for prevention and health promotion in the field of sexually transmitted infections
Thanks to dialogue with other family members, people who experienced life changing crisis and other experts, Sirkka Mullis has been on a learning path since many years. Sirkka is committed to a human rights-based development of psychiatry – among other things as trainer for « Open Dialogue ». Sirkka’s main job is working as a project manager for prevention and health promotion in the field of sexually transmitted infections.

Maria Grazia Cogliati Dezza


Psychiatrist
Maria Grazia Cogliati Dezza worked in Trieste: first on overcoming the Provincial Psychiatric Hospital with Franco Basaglia and Franco Rotelli, and after at the Mental Health Centre in Barcola. Then, she contributed to establishing the Department of Addictions, the Health District No. 2, for which she was responsible, and served as Socio-Sanitary Coordinator. She retired in May 2015.

Pina Caloro


Director of the Mental Health Center in Pavullo, Modena, Italy
Pina Caloro has been working on psychiatric rehabilitation for more than two decades. In 2015-2016, she started her training on Open Dialogue for a research project. The objective of the research was to evaluate the application of Open Dialogue principles in Mental Health Centers around Italy. The approach has since become integral to the work and lifestyle of the MHC in Pavullo (Modena, Italy), leading to a successful collaboration among all the services that make up a patient's network.

Tom Arnkil


PhD Tom Erik Arnkil (1950) worked as a research professor at the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare until his retirement on pension in 2014. He was responsible for research and development of cross-sectoral networks and dialogical practices. His angle of approach is sociology and social policy and he focused especially on the complex situations - “multi-agency muddles” - that emerge in fragmented service systems when various professionals from different agencies approach same clients and families with poor or no coordination from their specific sectors and units. He devoted his career of some 30 years for developing methods for bringing the clients and their social networks in the center of work and finding ways forward in dialogue. With his team he generated Anticipation Dialogues to help families and professionals to vision doable steps to a good future. AD has also been used widely for generating steps forward in organizations, projects and other challenging multi-player situations. His two latest books, co-authored with Jaakko Seikkula, have so far reached 16 international publications. After his retirement he has continued training in around the globe and generated a practical process for helping people find, discuss and strengthen elements of dialogicity in their everyday practices: What are our good concrete local experiences of co-creating Dialogical Space and what can we do to overcome challenges together.

Petra Hohn RN, MSc


Petra Hohn is a registered nurse and network therapist in Stockholm, Sweden, where she is the Director of two mental health outpatient clinics. She has been developing and teaching dialogical approaches since 2001 and served as a principal trainer and supervisor for Parachute NYC.

Ruthie Israeli LCSW


Ruthie Israeli is a psychotherapist and family therapist, former member of the Parachute NYC Manhattan Mobile Crisis Team and Trainer in NATM.

Peter Stastny MD


Peter Stastny is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist working in college mental health and supported housing programs. He was one of the principal initiators of Parachute NYC.

Líam Mac Gabhann


Líam Mac Gabhann is Associate Professor, in Mental Health Practice at the School of Nursing, Psychotherapy & Community Health, Dublin City University. He is a lecturer, mental health practitioner and community activist. Along with a wide group of colleagues his main programme of research focuses on `Transforming Dialogues in Mental Health Communities`. Much of this work centres around people reconciling their own experiences, perceptions and practices with other people/groups associated with mental health and using different approaches to improve these at individual, group, organisational and community level. Examples of relevant areas include; where people have extraordinary experiences and beliefs; when people are disenfranchised by society and community; and in the area of Trauma and responses to traumatic events. Approaches include cooperative learning, participative action, open dialogue and systemic family constellations work. Along with Paddy McGowan, an extended team and local community groups the Mental Health Trialogue Network Ireland (www.trialogue.co) was established in 2010. This involves local community groups comprising mental health service users, carers, service providers and interested community members holding monthly open dialogue meetings (Trialogue) to enhance peoples understanding and responses to people with mental health difficulties in their communities.

Sabine Dick


Sabine Dick (Et Sabine) is a systemic counsellor, consultant and advocate who has worked in peer-led and collaborative projects since more than 20 years. She studied sociology, English philology and ethnology in Trier and Berlin, Germany and later trained in systemic therapy, in trauma therapy, intentional peer support, systemic and family constellation.

Anna Margrete Flåm


Parachute NYC- 5 years working with dialogical network meetings in New York


Parachute NYC was a federally funded experimental program to train mobile crisis teams in providing Need Adapted Treatment/Open Dialogue services to individuals in acute psychiatric crises, primarly psychosis. In addition, the program developed Crisis Respite Centers that were available to the mobile teams and other referral sources. Through Parachute NYC roughly 120 clinicians and peer support workers were trained in Need Adapted Treatment/Open Dialogue and Intentional Peer Support. Over five years four mobile teams in four boroughs engaged over 300 individuals in crisis along with their networks and supported them in the community through dialogical network meetings. The presenters will give an overview of the project, a description of day-to-day operations and clinical work, and relay experiences of supervision.

Patterns of recovery and patterns of chronification in so called psychotic crises


By expressing ourselves in life crises, also in psychotic crises, we need accompaniment from someone who is willing and able to be moved and changed by our expressions, without the ambition of applying knowledge to change us.

Dialogical Practice and Human Capacity Building


This presentation will summarise a European Community Capacity Building project within an Erasmus Plus Cooperative Partnership, amongst people with mental health and substance use issues. It will then outline how Open Dialogue is being used to guide the participatory process; underpin a community education intervention; and harness the multiple perspectives as part of an overall project evaluation.

Open Dialogue and Reflecting Processes when Violence Happens Against Children: The Practice and Experience of a Multi-Agency, Cross-Professional Consultation Team in Tromsø Covering a Northern Norwegian County


This workshop will tell about the practice generated by a multi-agency, cross-professional consultation team supplying services for agencies asking for consultation in cases where children live in relationships with violence. The team’s main building blocks will be illustrated, its users, the main requests, and results. The team’s consulting practice based on open dialogical and reflecting processes, as well as the participants’ own reflections on the teamwork will be illuminated. Through the presentation, it will be exemplified how reflecting processes are invited into an open dialogical sharing among all, both team members and requesting agencies, illustrating how all voices are included without any voice gaining expert dominance, while leaving for the requesting agencies themselves to harvest freely what might suit them in their continuing work.

Human Being and its Discontents: Dialogicity and Humor in Open Dialogue


If dialogicity is an aspect of the human experience — that we perceive, interpret, experience, and act upon the world as part of a socially-constructed fabric - then Open Dialogue can be understood as working with the problems that arise when this fabric becomes strained, tattered and torn. Similarly, the laughter that often arises in OD meetings is not just incidental; it may be the pleasurable sensation of healing connections, discovering new perspectives, and finding ways forward. Understanding the moments of laughter in OD sessions can help us to more confidently track, understand, and build on these sometimes overlooked moments - the tickle of new meaning arising. Revealing the often joyous experiences may also help the world to see that OD is not just a way to fix problems that it would (if possible) ignore, but as a path to more powerfully and fearlessly embody the human experience. We will explore the evolution of this theory and its potential application to more confidently, powerfully, precisely - and safely - using humor in therapeutic and other contexts.
ITA

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