Presently, there is an increasing call for self-management strategies in healthcare. Self-management involves regarding patients as ‘expert-clients’, actively involved in the management of their own care. This approach is argued to have great advantages: it holds the prospect of more efficient and (cost)effective healthcare, and converges with theoretical developments underlining the importance of patients’ self-experience. However, self-management in mental healthcare entails major conceptual problems and can only be adequately realized when it is acknowledged that ‘the self’ itself is a core problem in psychiatry and psychosomatics. Existing self-management approaches do not fully recognize this and limit themselves primarily to management of disease. This workshop conceptualizes self-management as management of the self.

How is the self ‘as manager’ related to the self ‘as being managed’? Or, differently put: if self-management is taking care of one’s self, then who cares? To what extent can the self be meaningfully distinguished from a mental disorder? Whose is responsible in (and for) processes of self-management? What are the success-criteria for self-management? To address such questions, several researchers from various disciplines shed light on the intricate concept of self-management in psychiatry and psychosomatic illness in this one-day workshop

This workshop is an initiative of the NWO-funded research project “Management of the Self: a Humanities Approach to Self-Management in Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine”, carried out at Radboud University Nijmegen, University Medical Center Utrecht and the University of Amsterdam.

Register
This workshop is free of charge, but please register by sending an email to managingtheself@gmail.com. Available spaces are limited so seats are allocated on a first come, first serve basis.

Location
De Waagh, Grote Markt 26, 6511 KB Nijmegen