Professor Phil Barker

Phil Barker was the UK's first Professor of Psychiatric Nursing Practice at the University of Newcastle, England. He has held Visiting professorships at several European and Australasian universities, including Barcelona, Tokyo and Sydney. At present, he is Visiting Professor at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and Honorary Professor at the University of Dundee, Scotland. According to Google Scholar he is the most cited living psychiatric nurse theorist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing, UK, in 1995, one of the very few psychiatric nurses to receive this honour. In June 2000, he was invited to the Society of Medical Sciences, at the Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Tokyo, where he received the 'Red Gate' Award for Distinguished Professors, from Professor Kurita, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Tokyo. In 2006 he was awarded a Blackwell's Lifetime achievement award for his contribution mental health nursing. Phil has collaborated with Thomas Szasz and Loren Mosher among others and he continues to be one of the most influential advocates for the recovery of 'personhood' in mental health care.

Keynote Presentation: The death of vocation in the age of celebrity.

Western society is assumed to have passed the ‘end of history’ or, in some ridiculous sense, is ’post’ the past. This may be no more than a common misconception, shaped by assorted, often competing, contemporary pseudo-philosophies; each with something to gain from the emergent confusion.

If a ‘mental health field’ exists it might be characterised as ‘post-caring’ or ‘post-vocational’. What once was a simple quasi-medical business is now overwhelmed with a burgeoning army of disciplines, activists, ‘carers’, ‘experts by experience’ and others with financial or political interests. If this field of human activity ever had a point this has now become something of a blunt instrument.

The world of mental health – like aspects of contemporary Western society – is all ‘surface and signifiers’. Some disciplines claim allegiance to particular intentions, but what they ‘say’ and what they ‘do’ are often in conflict. Drawing upon my limited understanding of Zen, 1950s advertising psychology and the late writings of Samuel Beckett, I propose that anyone with a genuine interest in ‘mental health’ should say less, but more simply; and do more, but with genuine purpose.

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