Thursday 7 November, 2019
The 2019 joint conference of the Australia and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law (ANZAPPL) and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists is being held in beautiful Singapore. This year’s theme is Collaboration and Challenges Across the Global South.
Click here to view the program and here for the handbook.
Follow (and contribute!) live updates from the Congress using the Twitter hashtag #PPL2019.
Missed the first day? Click here to read our recap.
Good morning! Day two of our 2019 conference opened with a keynote presentation from Dr Hinemoa Elder, a forensic psychiatrist and Professor of Indigenous Health Research at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, Aoeteroa New Zealand. She is of Ngāti Kuri, Te Aupouri, Te Rarawa and Ngāpuhi descent, and is a strong advocate for te reo, the Māori languge, alongside her work.
Her presentation is titled Te Puna a Hinengaro: he tirohanga ki a āheinga. The Wellspring of Mind: Reflections on Capacity from a Māori Perspective. Here’s the abstract:
Capacity is a concept firmly grounded in the idea of autonomy, within a western philsophy of the mind. Both the content and process of testing capacity, well known to psychiatrists and lawyers alike, are known to be subject to cultural biases. Practice-based evidence suggests that assessing capacity in Māori, Indigenous peoples of New Zealand, is subject to such biases, related to the assessment tools and assumptions of assessors. Working towards a culturally-nuanced Māori capacity assessment requires competence in Māori ways of thinking about the mind and the value placed on the collective. Understanding and using mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge systems) in approrpate ways must underpin any valid approach to assessing capacity for Māori. Currently, this is not required by the legal structure.
This paper presents a range of Māori cultural resources from the tikanga (Māori lore) and research alongside discussion of extant New Zealand law where Māori concepts are embedded, to begin to establish the elements of a robust cultural approach to capacity assessment. These features lay the foundation for a future capacity law in Aoteroa New Zealand that fully encompasses Māori needs.
No direct reference is currently made to Māori values or processes in New Zealand’s main law regarding capacity, the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988 (PPPRA). In comparison, the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 (as amended in 2017), the Mental Health (Assessment and Treatment) Act 1992 (MHA) and the Subtance Addiciton (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Act 2017 illustrate how Māori values, structures and procsses can be made visible and part of the daily use of the legislation. They demonstrate that Māori constructs of collectivism, and collective decision-making, are part of extant law and key influences of psychiatrist practice. They therefore provide a potential framework for reform of New Zealand capacity law.
After the morning keynote (and morning tea) we again headed into parallel sessions. I was in Session 4B, Intimate Partner and Family Violence. The first speaker was ANZAPPL President Associate Professor Troy McEwan, who discussed her work with Victoria Police improving risk assessment in intimate partner violence.
The next presentation was given by Dr Hargun Ahluwalia from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Bangalore, India. She presented her doctoral research in a talk titled Intimate Partner Violence among Women with Substance Use Disorders: A Study from India.
Meanwhile, in Session 4D, Dr Abhilash Balakrishnan gave a presentation titled Capacity to consent to treatment — An adaptation of the McArthur competence assessment tool for treatment (McCAT-T) in India.
There was some disagreement about one of his statements.
Dr Chris Ryan, a psychiatrist and academic at the University of Sydney, presented next. His presentation was titled Are reforms to Australia’s Mental Health Acts Impacting on CTO usage?
(CTOs are Compulsory Treatment Orders, which do exactly what they sound like)
Dr Ryan made life easy for us:
Over lunch we had a poster presentation. I snuck in early to take photos of each before the crowds arrived — you can right click and save each image if you’d like to view it in much higher resolution.
Also over lunch we got suggestions from one delegate, Indigo Daya, about what could be done at future conferences to better highlight the perspectives of and issues that are important to consumers.
Be sure to click through to read the entire tweet thread — there are many terrific ideas there.
And speaking of, after lunch there was a first for ANZAPPL: a plenary session featuring the perspectives of people with lived experience, titled Research Co-Produced with Consumers and Peers to Combat Stigma in Health Service Provision.
The session was hosted by Dr Piers Gooding.
Each of the panelists gave a short opening statement. Mary O’Hagan was instrumental in establishing the psychiatrict survivors movement in New Zealand and has been a mental health commissioner there. She is currently a mental health and wellbeing consultant.
Next we heard from Janice Cambri, the founder of Psychosocial Disability-Inclusive Philippines.
Ngai Chun Victor Leung spoke next.
Finally, Nawira Baig, a peer support specialist here in Singapore, spoke.
Afterwards, the panel had a discussion about co-production of research, facilitated by Dr Gooding, before taking questions from the audience.
The first question came from conference co-convenor Dr Justin Barry-Walsh.
The second question came from delegate Indigo Daya.
For the final parallel sessions of the day I was in 6B: Compassion and the law. I’m sorry to say that I arrived slightly too late to tweet what seemed like a very interesting paper on the impact of forced and voluntary apologies.
The second paper was given by Prof Warren Brookbanks and concerned trauma-informed courts. The full title was Trauma Informed Courts: Therapeutic Jurisprudence at the Coalface.
The final paper that I saw today was delivered by Professor Mark Nolan. His paper concerned compassionate sentencing, and he did a remarkably good job of presenting even as technical difficulties meant he was without his slides for much of the talk.
Over in 6A, meanwhile, Dr Piers Gooding gave a talk titled The Rise of ‘Digital Mental Health Technologies’: Emerging Issues for Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.
And that’s all for today! Delegates are off to have a private hawker dining experience for the conference dinner, and I’m off to get some sugarcane juice from wherever I can find it. Until tomorrow!
Gary Dickson is the communications officer for ANZAPPL. He tweets professionally as @ANZAPPL and personally as @gzy_d.
Follow live updates from the 2019 Congress on Twitter: @ANZAPPL or search #PPL2019.
Want to contribute to the blog or have feedback? Email us: communications@anzappl.org.
