Meetings & Conferences
2023 AAPP Annual Meeting: Call for Abstracts
THEME: Knowledge, Expertise, & Values
2023 Annual Meeting May 20-21, 2023, San Francisco, CA
Meeting Location: TBA
Program Committee: Douglas Heinrichs, M.D.; Jennifer Radden, Ph.D.; John Sadler, M.D.
The Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP) aims to promote discussion between the fields of philosophy and psychiatry: https://aapp.press.jhu.edu/
Many diverse groups are engaged in issues related to mental health care: psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and counselors, nurses, basic scientists and researchers, and public health and policy specialists. In recent years the inclusion of mental health consumers and their families, and the organizations that represent them have grown in importance. Each of these groups claim some expertise to speak with authority about at least some aspects of mental health. Such claims to expertise are based on education, training, and what has come to be called “expertise by experience.”
The AAPP Annual Meeting for 2023 will inquire about the relationships between authority and expertise within the mental health field. Within this theme, a broad range of questions are possible. What counts as expertise? Who decides who is expert and with respect to what domain of knowledge? By what process does expertise become recognized? What kinds of power relations are reflected in various kinds of mental health expertise and authority and how are they embedded in the larger societal context? How can authority and/or expertise be circumscribed or bounded in mental health care? How do these considerations address accusations of epistemic injustices? How might epistemic injustices be arbitrated? What models of knowledge are implicit in these discussions? An important task in the philosophy of mental health is to characterize the legitimate domain(s) of expertise for each of the groups involved, where they overlap, and how to arbitrate differences in perspective. These tasks are important at the level of general policy decisions such as the development of diagnostic criteria, the selection of foci for research funding, and the allocation of mental health resources, as well as treatment negotiations between the clinician and the individual receiving mental health services.
Possible presentation topics include:
- What are the differences in expertise between the mental health clinician with extensive experience in treating many individuals and the academic or industry-based researcher conducting formal research studies but with little direct experience in treating individuals?
- To what extent is expertise limited by methodology; for example, can a psychiatrist speak with any authority about the mental health status of someone, such as a public figure, she has not examined directly using the established examination methodologies of the field?
- With the ascendancy of multidisciplinary treatment teams, how is the appropriate expertise of each discipline best defined and integrated?
- As the role of psychiatrists in current treatment models often limits the amount of face-to-face time with patients, what is the risk of undermining the psychiatrist's legitimate claim of expertise in understanding and treating the individual?
- Should mental health peer counselors work outside of or within the mental health clinical establishment?
- For what range of mental health related issues does the “expertise by experience” of mental health consumers and/or their families apply?
- How much is ‘expertise by experience” dependent upon the nature of the symptoms and course of the condition for which help has been sought?
- Because none of the various groups involved speak with a unified voice, how can the wide range of positions represented work together constructively?
- What are the overlaps and differences between the experience-based expertise of the seasoned clinician derived from many hours spent listening to and attempting to understand a wide array of individuals seeking help and the singular but first-person experience of an individual with mental illness?
- How is the expertise of the clinician and that of the person seeking help constructively and respectfully integrated in the treatment setting?
- In cases where one group chooses to reject the position of another group in the mental health arena, by what criteria can we distinguish unjustified disregard (epistemic injustice) from a legitimate appreciation of the limits of the expertise of the other group regarding the question at issue?
- When fundamental differences between groups claiming expertise cannot be successfully resolved through dialogue, how should final decisions on policy be appropriately made and by whom?
- How do different models of knowledge (such as perspectivism) alter the way expertise and authority are approached in these settings?
GENERAL TOPICS
While submissions related to the above highlighted topic will be given some priority, papers on all topics in the philosophy of psychiatry will be considered. Topics must have a clear relevance to the practice of psychiatry and mental health care, and not just to general areas of philosophy, such as philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of agency, etc.
SUBMITTING ABSTRACTS
Papers on general topics in philosophy or cognitive science without relevance to psychiatry or mental health, broadly understood, are not appropriate for this conference.
Psychiatric and psychological themes can address any issue in psychiatric/psychological education, research, diagnosis, or mental health care. The psychiatric issues should have clear philosophical implications or demonstrate the importance of philosophical positions in psychiatric work. Clinical reports or reflections that do not advance philosophical understanding are also not appropriate for this conference.
Abstracts of 500 – 600 words, prepared for anonymous review, should be sent to John Z. Sadler (John.Sadler@UTSouthwestern.edu) and Douglas Heinrichs (dwheinrichs@gmail.com). Questions about the conference should also be addressed to either of them. Abstracts are due on November 15, 2022. Notices of acceptance or rejection will be sent by January 15, 2023. Presentations will be strictly limited to 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.
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2022 AAPP Annual Meeting
THEME: OPEN
2022 Annual Meeting May 21-22, 2022, New Orleans, LA
Meeting Location: Hilton New Orleans Riverside (Windsor Room)
No registration is needed to attend the conference.
Conference Program: here
Conference Abstracts: here
Conference Program Committee: Jonathan Y. Tsou, PhD – Iowa State University jtsou@iastate.edu
Peter Zachar, PhD – Auburn University Montgomery pzachar@aum.edu
John Z. Sadler, MD, University of Texas Southwestern John.Sadler@UTSouthwestern.edu
Call for Papers:
The Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP) aims to promote discussion between the fields of philosophy and psychiatry. Although past conferences have been organized around a specific theme, for the 2022 annual meeting, AAPP invites abstracts for presentation on any topic that addresses philosophical issues relevant to psychiatry or psychiatric issues that are relevant to philosophy. Our aims for this conference are to bring together thinkers from a variety of disciplines who are interested in philosophy of psychiatry and to provide a forum for the presentation of work on both emerging and classic questions in ‘philosophy and psychiatry.’ We are interested in papers drawing from any subdiscipline of philosophy, including: Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Science Ethics/Bioethics Phenomenology Feminist Philosophy Social and Political Philosophy Epistemology and Metaphysics History of Philosophy and Psychiatry.
Papers on general topics in philosophy or cognitive science without relevance to psychiatry or mental health, broadly understood, are not appropriate for this conference.
Psychiatric and psychological themes can address any issue in psychiatric/psychological education, research, diagnosis, or mental health care. The psychiatric issues should have clear philosophical implications or demonstrate the importance of philosophical positions in psychiatric work.
Clinical reports or reflections that do not advance philosophical understanding are also not appropriate for this conference.
Abstracts of 500 – 600 words, prepared for anonymous review, should be sent to Jon Tsou (jtsou@iastate.edu) and Peter Zachar (pzachar@aum.edu). Questions about the conference should also be addressed to either of them. Abstracts are due on November 15, 2021. Notices of acceptance or rejection will be sent by January 15, 2022. Presentations will be strictly limited to 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.
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The 2021 Annual Meeting was held online Saturday April 17 and Sunday April 18, 9AM-3PM, US Eastern Time.
Intuitions Meet Experiments: Methods in Philosophy of Psychiatry
Keynote Speakers:
Edouard Machery, PhD, Distinguished Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh
Miriam Solomon, PhD, Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy at Temple University
See the conference program here and the conference abstracts here.
The conference will be held over Zoom.
To register for the conference and get a link for Zoom, click here.