Bio notes

Carina Carvalhais Matos - She has a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology with a specialization in Family and Systemic Therapies. She attended a university extension course in Complementary and Integrative Practices in Human Health. She works as hostess in a mental health residency with artistic dimension. She has been a member of the Hearing Voices Movement since May 2021, in which she has been facilitating some sessions of the Group of Family and Friends of Hearers. After some years of writing down her channelings (how she understands that which she hears), she recently began to value their artistic potential, writing them on pieces of clothing stemmed from deadstock fabrics. Poetizing the therapies - since she sees double meanings in the terms of psychopharmaceuticals – she also creates, beyond clothing, other forms of art.

Célia Colimão graduated in Visual Arts - Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon. Alongside this, she attended a Course for Mentors of Child Plastic Expression at CAI (Child Art Centre) of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, developing her work, in the spirit of Education for Art, in different projects of formal workshops for children, and covering a diversity of social and ethnic contexts, as well as with with persons with cognitive disabilities and psychiatric diagnoses. In December 1997, she was diagnosed with bipolarity, and this circumstance aroused her strong interest in issues related to the psychiatric field and social inclusion. In 2018, she attended a creative ceramics course at CENCAL, Caldas da Raínha, where she developed techniques of artisanal and serial production. 

Celina Vilas-Boas - Psychologist, she assists people with experiences of altered or non-consensual reality - people who hear, see, feel, or believe things that other people do not (e.g., hearing voices or feeling persecuted). Her approach is influenced by the Hearing Voices Movement, Open Dialogue, Therapeutic Accompaniment and, in general, by alternative approaches to psychosis that have been growing, largely, because of the work and perseverance of people with these experiences. She is also a facilitator of groups in the Hearing Voices Movement - Portugal and a monitor of crises in Horizonte Portugal.

David W. Oaks has been a psychiatric survivor human rights activist since 1976.
All of his grandparents were immigrants from Lithuania, who settled in Illinois. Both his grandfathers were coal miners for a total of 31 years. David was born in 1955 and raised working-class in Chicago’s south side. He attended Harvard on scholarships, including from his father’s union. While he was in college, David was placed in psychiatric institutions five times, where he experienced forced psychiatric drugging and solitary confinement. Harvard’s student volunteer agency placed David as an intern with one of the early psychiatric survivor organizations, Mental Patients Liberation Front.
David found mental and emotional recovery through family closeness, exercise, peer support groups, nutrition, counseling, wilderness trips, protest, employment, and more. In 1977, he graduated from Harvard with honors and chose to be off all psychiatric drugs. With support from other MPLF leaders, including author Judi Chamberlin, he started one of the first user-owned-and-run psychiatric survivor community drop-in centers. David moved to Oregon in the 1980’s and helped start the nonprofit that became MindFreedom International, one of the main independent human rights coalitions in the mental health field. He served as MFI’s Executive Director for 25 years and spoke in a dozen countries. In 2009, Utne magazine named David Oaks one of 50 Visionaries.
In December 2012, David experienced a severe accident; he fell and broke his neck and became a quadriplegic with a disabled voice using a powerchair. Using his decades of experience and disability, David has continued to be active for social change, and launched a green disability consulting business, Ačiū! Institute.
David has become very active locally and nationally with his Unitarian Universalist (UU) Church. He serves as the Chair of the Church Accessibility Task Force. David started and coordinates a Facebook group with more than 250 for Mental Health Justice UU.
David has won several awards, and these continue after his profound disabilities. In 2021, David won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery. He also won the Oregon Advocacy Award issued by Mental Health Association of Portland.
David lives with his wife Debra in Eugene, where he is an activist for a nonviolent revolution not only in mental health, but in addressing the climate crisis. 

Luís Oliveira - Graduated in Psychology, with a Master in Applied Adult Neuropsychology from the Lusophone University of Humanities and Technologies (ULHT) and, currently, a 2nd year PhD student in Educational Sciences at ULHT. He is integrated researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Education and Development (CeiED) and professor at the European University in the Graduate Mental Health in Adulthood. He investigates and works in Neuropsychology in Unipolar and Bipolar pathologies. Currently, he is Vice-President of the Board, member of the scientific board and neuropsychologist of the Association for the Support of Depressive and Bipolar Patients (ADEB), a public utility association that works on psychosocial rehabilitation. He coordinates the ADEB art space, where he performs cognitive stimulation through physical activity and the arts. He develops and collaborates in various artistic, rehabilitation and research projects. He collaborates with the magazine “Bipolar” and represents the association in numerous national and international events. He is an activist for the rights of people with disabilities and diagnosed mental illness. He is a Counselor in the National Health Council and the National Council for Mental Health. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Portuguese Medicinal Cannabis Observatory. He is mentor of the www.falamedemusica.net project (teaching music to blind and low vision people), poetry writer, interpreter, and instrumentalist (viola, cavaquinho and percussions) and contemporary dancer. 

Mattia Faustini is a PhD student and researcher at the Center for Social Studies. Graduated in Clinical-dynamic psychology at the University of Padova (IT), his interests focus on the area of literature, sociology of culture and mental health, particularly in poetic writing and poetry-therapy. Currently enrolled in the interdisciplinary doctoral course "Discourses: Culture, History and Society" (CES), he studies poetry workshops as a participatory research methodology and as a space for the counter-hegemonic imagination of citizenship. He is a member and author in the Cultural Section of Writing and Reading of the Academic Association of Coimbra (SESLA), with which he organizes cycles of cultural events and performative acts in urban contexts. Both a psychologist among poets and a poet among psychologists, Mattia Faustini never is, in the end, neither one thing nor the other. 

Mônica Nunes (ISC – Universidade Federal da Bahia)

Paulo Amarante - Physician, Specialist in Psychiatry, Master of Sciences in social medicine, Doctor, and Post Doctor in Public Health. Senior Researcher at the “Sergio Arouca” National School of Public Health of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (ENSP/Fiocruz). He was the founder of the Laboratory of Studies and Research in Mental Health and Psychosocial Care (LAPS), of the Foundation, of which he was Coordinator and Lead Researcher. He still is a leading member of the Research Group of the National Research Council (CNPq). Founder and former President of the Brazilian Association of Mental Health (ABRASME), and President Honoris causa. He is a doctor Honoris causa of the Popular University of Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Argentina); Honorary Professor of the Faculdad de Psicología de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario (Argentina). Member of the Advisory Board of the Brazilian Drug Policy Platform; Member of the working group in Mental Health of the Brazilian Collective Health Association (ABRASCO). Member of the Brazilian Executive Committee of the International School & Franco Basaglia (WHO/Centro di Studi e Ricerche per la Salute Mentale/Trieste/Italy). Member of the Participation Committee in Copersamm (Conferenza Permanente per la Salute Mentale nel Mondo); Member of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drugs Withdrawal (IIPDW). He is the author of the books "Loucos pela vida: a trajetória da reforma psiquiátrica no Brasil", "Teoria e Crítica em Saúde Mental - Textos selecionados", "Loucura e Transformação Social – autobiografia da Reforma Psiquiátrica no Brasil", among others. 

Sílvia Portugal holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Coimbra. She is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra (FEUC) and researcher at the Center for Social Studies (CES). Her research work has used network theory to discuss the relationships between formal and informal systems of welfare production. In this context, she investigated the importance of the family in the Portuguese social welfare system, giving special emphasis to the role of women. In the last few years, she has focused the themes of disability, mental illness and chronicity. She edited “Cidadania, Políticas Públicas e Redes Sociais” (IUC, 2011); “Doença Mental, Instituições e Famílias. Os desafios da desinstitucionalização em Portugal”, with Pedro Hespanha et al. (Almedina, 2012); “Famílias e Redes Sociais. Ligações Fortes na Produção de Bem-estar" (Almedina, 2014); “Experiência, Saúde, Cronicidade: um olhar socioantropológico”, with Reni Barsaglini and Lucas Melo (FIOCRUZ/IUC, 2021) and “A Saúde Reinventada: Novas perspectivas sobre a medicalização da vida”, with Tiago Pires Marques (CES/Almedina, 2021). She is co – Principal Investigator of the PSYGLOCAL project. 

Tiago Pires Marques - FCT Principal Researcher at the Center for Social Studies (CES), University of Coimbra since 2014. He holds a PhD in History from the European University Institute of Florence, with the dissertation “Crime and the Fascist State” (Routledge, 2016). He accomplished his post-doctorate between 2008 and 2013, with the project "Science, religion and subjectivities", at the Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques (Ecole Normale Supérieure - University of Paris 1), Cermes3 (CNRS) and the Portuguese Catholic University, in which he coordinated the book “Experiências à deriva. Paixões religiosas e psiquiatria na Europa - Séculos XV a XXI” (Cavalo de Ferro, 2013). He investigates the history of mental health models in their relationship with the medicalization of life and the history of human rights. He is especially interested in the knowledge, political proposals and alternatives to psychiatry produced by the movements of users in the field of psychiatry. Among his recent publications, feature the book “Legitimidades da Loucura. Sofrimento, luta, criatividade e pertença" (Edufba – Editor of the Federal University of Bahia, 2018; coord. in collaboration with Mônica Nunes) and “A Saúde Reinventada: Novas perspectivas sobre a medicalização da vida” (CES/ Almedina; coord. in collaboration with Sílvia Portugal). He is the Principal Investigator of the PSYGLOCAL project. 

Teresa Santos graduated in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Lisbon (1981/1987). She holds a master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, specialized in Industrial Pharmacy at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Lisbon since 2019. After obtaining the Degree, between 1988 and 1990, she moved to Macau where she still holds the position of Quality Assurance in an antibiotic factory of the ex- Portuguese colony. In Portugal, she also practices her profession of pharmacist the domain of regulatory affairs. In 2005 she was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome and Autism – psychiatric technical terms that led to periods of isolation and lack of confidence in medications. This fact had a strong individual impact on her life. She then joined AEIPS - Association for Psychosocial Study and Integration. This association provides her forms of stabilization from a personal, family, social and economic point of view. In this institution she explores the world of Mind, Citizenship and Cultural Diversity.