Sarah Golightley

Every year thousands of young people are sent to therapeutic boarding schools (TBS) in the USA. TBS are residential programmes that combine educational classes and group therapy in self-contained facilities that operate year-round. The programmes are part of a wider 'troubled teen industry' that seeks to reform young people perceived as having mental health and/or substance misuse problems. Interviews were conducted with former TBS students about their experiences as youth inside these facilities. The research was undertaken from a survivor-researcher approach and was conducted by a former TBS student with former students. This article will focus on the experiences of two LGBTQþ former students who were subjected to conversion therapy in TBS. The case studies will describe conversion practices that pressure people to change or suppress their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression. Conversion therapy manifested in overt and covert forms that resulted in lasting psychological trauma. The case studies highlight the impacts of conversion therapy as epistemic injustice and the ways in which the former students adapted to and resisted institutional harm. Implications for practice include the importance for social workers to understand conversion therapy as a dynamic, evolving and potentially subtle practice.

In the United States, thousands of young people reside in private schools aimed at reforming 'troubled teens'. These 'troubled teens' are young people who are considered to have emotional, behavioural and/or substance misuse problems. Therapeutic boarding schools are programmes that combine educational classes and group therapy in a self-contained residential facility that runs year-round. Case study interviews with former US-based therapeutic boarding school students demonstrate the role of sanism, adultism and epistemic injustice in constructing and regulating the 'troubled teen'. The schools' strict structure and surveillance culture could not override students will and their ability to find means to resist. The article's central aim is to centre the perspectives of former students and critique social control of young people in therapeutic boarding schools.

There are ongoing tensions in activist and community groups regarding the suitability of medication for mental distress. These tensions are based on assumptions of separate-but-connected notions of body and mind. Antipsychiatry perspectives resist medicinal interventions only for disablements commonly thought of as 'psychological'. Antipsychiatry activists who claim psychopharmaceutic interventions are scientifically unsubstantiated potentially undermine service user knowledges that draw on a breadth of experiential impacts, both of medication's harm and effectiveness. Furthermore, within a context of neoliberalism it is necessary to remain critical of how demedicalization movements can be coopted by austerity agendas to reduce public spending on healthcare. The article goes beyond body versus mind debates to critically engage with the ethics of embodiment and towards envisioning Mad epistemic justice. Mad epistemic justice would require a repositioning of power structures in healthcare by fundamentally centering service users' needs and expertise.

This presentation will examine the problematics of theorising mental ‘health’ and ‘distress’ as a separate function from physical disability; of Mad Studies when it is detached from a critical disability politic. I will discuss how Anti-Psychiatry and Mad Studies approaches that reject neurobiological aspects of mental health often do so through the reification of mental health’s difference to presumed measurable and objective medicalisation of physical aspects of the body.

I will discuss how a mind-body dualism is in and of itself an oppressive construct that compartmentalises complex experience. Within Mad Studies there has been prolific writing on the limitations of psychopharmacology and coercion within the medical industry. Without minimising the importance of this, we must also examine what a totalizing rejection of medical treatment implies for those who are campaigning for improved and increased access to adequate medical care, including people with physical disabilities, and trans people.

Research suggests that transgender people are at an increased risk of domestic abuse: 50% or more of transgender people experience domestic abuse at some point in their life in the UK. Nevertheless, the majority of domestic violence refuges are designed for ‘women only’ without consideration of ways to make these safe havens accessible and relevant to transgender domestic violence victims/survivors. Improved access to domestic violence refuges is a paramount issue for the safety of transgender victims/survivors of domestic abuse and for the equality of all transgender people. The goal of this workshop is to increase awareness of the needs of transgender domestic violence victims/survivors. Research will be presented from a transfeminist approach, challenging gender oppression by promoting transgender inclusive services. The workshop will interweave information, discussion and skill sharing.