Ms Em Murphy:

It is important from the perspective of the service user to say something on mental health diagnoses and presentations. Mr. Williams spoke about many people who come into recovery. I was somebody who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety. This was in a very fatalistic way whereby I was born with a broken brain and I would be broken forever. This is the story people are told. This is the story I internalised about myself. It is very much based on the medical model that we really need to move away from. We need to move towards a trauma-informed model. As Ms McGillivary pointed out, this does not look at what diagnosis somebody has or what medical issues they have. They are not seen through a medical lens but through a trauma lens. It looks at what happened to people to make them respond in a way that they have these behavioural adaptations to an unsafe environment. Most of this is about the adaptations that people develop to a lack of safety in their lives. If we reinstate the safety that people need often we find the symptoms or disorders are not really there at all.