The Mental Health Association of Portland produced the Oregon Law & Mental Health Conference in June 2017.

For full information about the conference, see the web site at www.olmhc.org. Thanks to the Flying Focus Video Collective for making these recordings.

Here are two presentations from the conference.

A Community Perspective on US DOJ v. City of Portland

with Ashlee Albies, JD, Kristen Chambers, JD, and Rev. Dr. T. Allen Bethel, of the Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform.

Schizophrenia and I: Making Peace with my Mental Illness

introduction by Beckie Child, MSW – Program Committee for the Conference
speech followed by Q&A with Elyn Saks, JD

Keynote address to the 290 attendees of the Oregon Law & Mental Health Conference.

Elyn Saks is Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the USC Gould School of Law; Director of the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics; Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the UC San Diego, School of Medicine; and Faculty at the New Center for Psychoanalysis. She served as USC Gould’s associate dean for research from 2005-2010 and also teaches at the Keck School of Medicine. Saks received her JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD in Psychoanalytic Science from the New Center for Psychoanalysis. She was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree (LLD, Hon) from Pepperdine University.

Saks writes extensively in the area of law and mental health, having published five books and more than fifty articles and book chapters. Her research has included the ethical dimensions of psychiatric research and forced treatment of people with mental illness. Her memoir, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, describes her struggles with schizophrenia and her managing to craft a good life for herself in the face of a dire prognosis. She has won numerous honors, including a 2009 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship (the so-called “Genius Grant”).