Facilitated by : Rabhya Dewshi, Vivienne Hopkins, Reem Ramadan, Nick Barnes and Steve Potter
The climate and ecological emergency (CEE) poses a major threat to physical and mental health across the globe. It poses an unprecedented, existential threat to the survival of humanity and of civilised society. What are our responses, as individuals, therapists, and members of society? How can CAT help us to understand our relationships with the emergency, develop healthy engagement and resilience, for ourselves and others?
For our next meeting we would like to build on the work of this first meeting to develop a shape and form for the SIG, and warmly invite you to join us, whether you attended the first meeting or not. Is the focus of a SIG to be activism in partnership with other groups, activity through the use of CAT to help formulate distress, denial and other relationships to the CEE? Should we be thinking about intergroup dynamics, or be involved in our professional roles to add climate awareness to our formulations and work for mental health? We also plan to consider the practicalities of how we structure ourselves as a group, how often we meet, what events we might put on, and generally how we can use CAT to address the CEE.
This group has met four times and has included CAT people from the UK, ireland, Australia, Finland and New Zealand. We have met in the early morning 8am UK time to fit in with Evening time in Australia and New Zealand. We have also tried meeting in the evening time to attract a wider group in Europe. We are currently putting together an online newsletter that will go on this page of activities and events in progress reported by members of the special interest group.
Anyone involved in CAT and working with their own national association is welcome to get involved. It is a slow journey at an urgent time of crisis and we hope we can make a difference by showing how CAT conversational and relational approach, its concepts and tools can help describe what is going on and where change is possible.
Date of the next meeting: Wednesday 14th September 8-10 am BST
contributions to the online newsletter please send to one of the members of the executive group
Registration: follow this link to register. There is no charge but please register as we will send the zoom link only to registered participants.