The registration fees for presenters of accepted proposals will be waived.
This year, The Mental Health Association of San Francisco's Annual Conference will bring together peers, advocates, providers, community-based stakeholders, tech developers, and government leaders in a collaborative and actionable learning environment to analyze what is “crazy” about the mental health system and the world around us. We will have presentations that best fit the conference theme, Redefining Crazy: It's the System, not the People.
GUIDELINES FOR PRESENTATIONS
We are inviting engaging presentations on how to integrate a fractured mental health system through innovative solutions that avoid expensive, emergency care services. Presentations should bring diverse and cross-disciplinary perspectives in peer support, research, social media/mental health apps, clinical strategies, tele-medicine, and the latest mental health technology such as gamification and virtual reality. We highly encourage presentations that address and incorporate the needs of diverse communities and engage new and non-traditional stakeholders via culturally responsive, person-first, evidence-based solutions.
PRESENTATION TRACKS
Hoarding Disorder & Cluttering Behaviors: Peer support and strategies to help create powerful and positive solutions for collecting behaviors.
We welcome mental health experts, policy leaders, providers, researchers, advocates, and individuals living with hoarding and cluttering challenges to foster collaboration in an environment of learning and discovery.
Communities Reclaiming Wellness: Utilizing community-based wisdom in our wellness practices.
In the face of our broken mental health care system, people continue to survive, heal, and support one another. We welcome community members to this conversation grounded in the expertise and wisdom of our support networks. Together we will explore what it means to take back healing and wellness for ourselves and our communities.
Mental Health @ Work: How employers can champion mental health and well-being in the workplace by exploring ways they can ensure employees experience their jobs in a meaningful and purposeful way.
In order to build an organizational culture that embraces recovery and wellness, it is critical to provide employees with access to mental health education, resources, and relevant training to avoid burnout, reduce the risk of suicide, and prevent crisis through the guidance and direction of organizational leadership. Whether you’re a non-profit employer seeking to hire and retain peer-identified staff or a private-sector employer looking to optimize your workforce’s mental health, we invite you to share your expertise, wellness practices, and challenges your organization faces.
Mental Health + Technology: Linking mental health and technology by exploring innovative tech supports and discussing standards and accountability practices to ensure that tech actively helps users with mental health challenges.
We invite both tech developers and tech users to be a part of this collaborative conversation on creating cultural change in the ways we think about and respond to mental health needs.
TOPIC CATEGORIES
Quality of Life
We are seeking presentations that discuss cutting edge solutions for improving the quality of life in individuals with mental health challenges. This includes increasing access to services, appropriate treatment, wellness/mindfulness tools, work-life balance, and community support. These solutions can be individual/family-facing, provider-facing, or system -facing.
Systems of Care
We encourage proposals that spotlight integrated broad-scale models and ideas that improve mental health treatment at the systemic or wide-reaching community levels. Presentations can discuss community-based solutions that bridge research and practice regarding mental health intervention including education, community services, and governmental policy. We are also looking for proposals that demonstrate successful, collaborative models for a seamless treatment delivery system.
Innovation
We are seeking proposals that focus on progressive research, theory, and practice as related to mental health challenges and related conditions. We also highly encourage interactive tech demonstrations that showcase cutting-edge ideas where our conference audience can provide feedback. We’re looking for peer-based and community-based research and technology that are paradigm shifting in its approach. We also seek proposals that address the need for standards and accountability in mental health-focused tech innovations.
Paradigm Shift in Clinical Care
We are accepting proposals in the areas of mental health recovery-oriented practices including innovative clinical modalities. We highly encourage presentations that identify what’s “crazy” with current treatment and delivery methods while offering solutions emphasizing peer support and recovery. These solutions should work on engaging and supporting individuals with mental health challenges in minority and underrepresented communities, including but not limited to LGBTQ, cultural communities, seniors, etc.
THE CONFERENCE ADVISORY COMMITTEE IS SEEKING PROPOSALS FOR:
- 60-minute breakout presentations
- BLIP: Brief Learning & Informational Presentation that is a 20-minute (TED Talk-style-this will be in the evening on 11/6) performance
- Panels (60 minutes)
- Q&A talks with an interviewer (45 minutes)
