Martha Griffin is an Expert by Experience, Lecturer in Mental Health in DCU, a Peer Educator with the Dublin North, North East Recovery College. Martha has studied law and is qualified as a Community Development Worker. Martha is passionate about human rights and mental health and would like to see life after a successful mental health movement where a new paradigm and world order would reign and Martha could spend more time with her family and her garden.

Harry Gijbels is a retired mental health nurse and academic with over 40 years’ experience in challenging reductionist and coercive mental health practices, in both the UK and in Ireland. He chaired the Board of Brent (a London Borough) Mind in the late 80s/early 90s. He moved to Ireland in the late 90s and played a key role in the establishment of Sli Eile, the Critical Voices Network Ireland (CVNI), and the Hearing Voices Network Ireland (HVNI). Since 2009, he, together with Lydia Sapouna, organises an annual Critical Perspectives in Mental Health conference at University College Cork, Ireland.

Jennifer Hough is a PhD researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, University of Galway, where she is examining coercion in EU asylum law. Previously, she worked as a journalist for 15 years, writing extensively on mental health, human rights and social issues. She is a writer and editor with Mad in Ireland, where she continues to challenge dominant approaches to mental distress and psychiatric practice. Her engagement with these issues is deeply personal, having lost her sister following years within a system centred on psychiatric labels, diagnoses and medication. Her aim is to challenge systems and practices that subvert people’s human rights, dignity and agency, and to examine how such practices are sanctioned and legitimised through law.

Líam Mac Gabhann is a mental health practitioner for over 25 years, with 15 years in traditional therapeutic roles as mental health nurse and counsellor. Latterly over the last 10 years his therapeutic work has broadened out from a realisation that traditional approaches are insufficient on their own in how they could help people heal from significant life challenges and trauma. This led to an exploration of and training in alternative healing approaches, such as Reiki, Shamanism, Tai Chi, Mindfulness, Systemic Family Constellations and Body Work. Liam spreads his time practicing in, providing education for and researching within mental health communities. He is dedicated to transforming dialogues in mental health communities towards the emerging globally legitimate new paradigm, that needs to displace the ineffective traditional psychiatric disenfranchising paradigm.

Owen Ó Tuama. Haigh, I am Owen Ó Tuama. I am a survivor of psychiatry, being sectioned 30 years ago in Ireland. I am a qualified Peer Support Worker and a proud voice-hearer. I am chairperson of Hearing Voices Network Ireland and am involved in the PSI-STAR Project at Royal College of Surgeons Ireland. I currently practice arts-based peer support in Donegal Mental Health Service and volunteer with Mad In Ireland.

Triona Byrne is a passionate community development worker that has had a fire lit inside her to change the way we as a community of people and society support one another through life’s ups and downs. Triona’s lived experience of supporting a loved one through mental health challenges which led to addiction issues has pushed her to critique the current approaches used in westernised countries that are used to support somebody in recovery from both mental health and substance use challenges (Dual Diagnosis). The journey to recovery for the individual and family members is a lonely and isolated one that can be shrouded with stigma and shame. Triona strives to be part of a movement that changes this. Most recently, Triona has been working on a project around community mobilisation to respond to Dual Diagnosis in an area of high low socio-economic class. This has led to the unfortunate realisation that a diminishing sense of community is contributing to people’s overall mental health, resulting in unhealthy ways of coping. Communities are forced to respond in a reactive manner resulting in a cycle of “firefighting”. The lack of a community wide collective response has also hindered individuals and family members’ access to appropriate integrated pathways to recovery and support creating a revolving door of care, something Triona wants to change in her new role as recovery community development officer with the Recovery Academy of Ireland.

Izzy Neenan is a trainee holistic counsellor and psychotherapist, a mental health peer support worker, and a psychiatric system survivor. Her lived experience fuels her passion for challenging the current psychiatric system and advocating for more compassionate, person-centred, and holistic approaches to mental health. She believes healing begins when people are truly heard, understood, and treated as whole human beings rather than diagnoses. She hopes to contribute to meaningful change through both her work and her writing.