“Mental Moose” slots are opportunities for people to propose sessions the morning of the conference. The sessions will be voted on by participants, and the proposals with the most votes will be slotted into the available times. It’s called “Mental Moose” in nostalgic memory of Northern Voice’s Moosecamp.

9-9:30 Keynote

9:35-10:20
Room 1
Escape from Bummer Island – Imagining A Mental Health Adventure Game
By “Depression 2.0”

9:35-10:20
Room 2
Arts Based Advocacy: Sound Therapy Radio
By Jay Peachy

9:35-10:20
Room 3
Mental Moose

10:15-11:00
Room 1
Ripping the Scabs off Through Writing
By Steffani Cameron

10:15-11:00
Room 2
Digital Outing / Mad Pride
By Steven Schwartz

10:15-11:00
Room 3
Getting By With A Little Help From Our Friends
By Henry Jue

11-11:20 BREAK

11:25-12:10
Room 1
MHSM Chat – A virtual session about the weekly mental health chat on Twitter
By Amy Kiel

11:25-12:10
Room 2
How Covenant House’s blog “On the House” helps break the silence around mental health issues
By Michelle Clausius

11:25-12:10
Room 3
Mental Moose

12:15-1:40 LUNCH

1:45-2:30
Room 1
ADHD and stigma
By Pete Quily

1:45-2:30
Room 2
Panel: Being ‘out’ about various forms of mental illness such as bipolar disorder, eating disorders, ADD, and post-partum depression
By Terra, Steve, Steff and Catherine

1:45-2:30
Room 3
Mental Moose

2:35-3:20
Room 1
Who gets to talk about mental health? When, where, why, how?
By Isabella Mori

2:35-3:20
Room 2
Mental Moose

2:35-3:20
Room 3
Mental Moose

3:50-4:25
Room 1
The Power Of Words and The Power Of Bikes – A Journalist Goes on a Bicycle Tour to Raise Awareness of Mental Health
By Michael Schratter

3:50-4:25
Room 2
Mental Moose

3:50-4:25
Room 2
Mental Moose

4:30-5:00 Closing Statements

We don’t have our schedule completely worked out yet but the idea is to have sessions anywhere between 40 and 85 minutes. We will have between 6 and 10 sessions.

If you would like to present, please contact us and send us a short proposal, containing your name(s) and email, an overview over what you would like to discuss (no more than 200 words), a bio (no more than 100 words), and indicating your social media presence (e.g. your blog, twitter address, etc.)

The general questions we’d like to address, according to our soon-to-be finalized press release (thanks, Cathy!) are

• How can blogging help decrease the stigma of mental health?
• How does someone with a mental illness navigate the waters of anonymity in the transparent world of social media?
• How is the journaling that happens in blogging similar to or different from journaling for healing?
• How can social media participants with mental health issues help each other?

Here are some specific topics we thought might be of interest. As of today, March 10, some of these already have “dibs” – we’ve indicated where that is the case. However, if there is a topic to which you would like to contribute, please let us know, and maybe there is still room.

• Depression
• Anonymity (Lorraine, @unsuicide) – maybe also talk about the vulnerability that comes with putting your story “out there” even when the blogger is anonymous.
• Stigma, myth and activism
• Writing (update – Isabella would like to do something about that)
• Addiction
• ADD (Pete Quily)
• Information production and information consumption – on the consumption side, credibility and reliability issues (@unsuicide?)
• Family members with mental illness
• Medications
• Online commiseration and community building

Want to get even more specific? Here is part of the summary of suggested topics from Isabella’s blog.

• Blogging and language; i.e. the language of “mental illness” vs. “mental health” or “personal growth”; how does language stigmatize?
• What problems has “being out” caused in personal and professional life?
• How to deal with commenters/bloggers making “antipsychiatry” suggestions (”don’t take medication” or “you don’t need to see a professional”)
• How can the blogging culture subvert the dominant therapeutic paradigm?
• How to deal with trolls on mental health blogs
• How long to blog about mental health? When you reach the point of truly getting over your problems, what happens next?
• What happens when a person’s distress increases due to blogging (as in peer-reinforced delusions, one-upmanship in “I’m more depressed than you are” virtual community interactions, internet addiction etc)
• Does a feeling of exposure sometimes arise which can go beyond discomfort and become crippling?
• Many famous people have been bipolar or unipolarly depressives. I would like blogs to mention more about the amazing visions of people like Edgar Allen Poe and the long list of others who have given without focusing on their disorder.

AN UPDATE on speaker proposals is here.