Conference a coup for university: organisers

Hosting a major international philosophy and psychiatry conference this week is a "feather in the cap" for the University of Otago and Dunedin, organisers say.

About 100 delegates, including about 40 from abroad, will attend the 15th International Philosophy and Psychiatry Conference, which starts at the university tomorrow.

The three-day conference, which is being run on behalf of the International Network for Philosophy and Psychiatry, has not previously been held in New Zealand.

Otago Bioethics Centre senior lecturer Dr Neil Pickering, who convenes the Dunedin organising committee, said the conference would explore tantalising questions about the boundary between sanity and insanity, and would focus on the theme "Culture and mental health".

Leading Maori thinkers are among the keynote speakers.

Psychiatric diagnoses tended to arise from Western sources and were often not well-suited to the traditions of indigenous peoples, organisers said.

Two speakers, Massey University deputy vice-chancellor Prof Sir Mason Durie and Otago Prof Grant Gillett, will give an open lecture on "The mind and mental health in two worlds" at the St David lecture theatre at 6.15pm tomorrow.

Prof Derek Bolton, of Kings's College London, and Prof Werdie van Staden, of the University of Pretoria, South Africa, are among the speakers.

 

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