International Society of Critical Health Psychology
The International Society of Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP) is a society devoted to debate about critical ideas within health psychology and developing new ways of health psychology practice. ISCHP's members commonly make use of qualitative methods and participatory research methods to address social, political and cultural issues within health psychology.
ISCHP's next conference will be held Sunday 12 to Wednesday 15 July 2015 in Grahamstown in South Africa at Rhodes University. Further details about the abstract submission process can be found on the conference website.
History
In July 1999, the First International Conference on Critical and Qualitative Approaches to Health Psychology was held in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, organised by Michael Murray. Over 120 critical health psychologists from 20 countries and every continent on the globe attended the conference. It was agreed that there was an urgent need to establish a network to begin to connect those health psychologists throughout the world who were interested in developing a more critical approach to the subject.
In August 2001, the Second International Conference was held in Birmingham, UK. The International Society of Critical Health Psychology was established at this conference. The founding committee members include (alphabetically) Kerry Chamberlain, Sue Dalton, Antonia Lyons, David Marks, Michael Murray, Alan Radley, Wendy Stainton Rogers and Chris Stephens. Currently, the Chair of ISCHP is Wendy Stainton Rogers and the Vice-Chair is Chris Stephens.
Aims
ISCHP has the following aims:
- Encourage, enable and disseminate research and scholarship in critical health psychology and provide opportunities for debate and discussion in this field.
- Provide a forum for scrutinising, challenging and questioning what is said and done in the purported pursuit of promoting and improving "health" by health psychologists and others.
- Operate as a community of scholars (in the widest definition of that term and absolutely not restricted to people with formal affiliations to a university or other academic body), offering each other mutual support in the pursuit of critical approaches to health.
- In particular, nurture and help early-career, young and emerging scholars in the field, and engage with and learn from communities and groups conventionally excluded or under-represented.
Members of the Society take a variety of theoretical and methodological viewpoints. However, as with other critical psychologists, they share a common dissatisfaction with the positivist assumptions of much of mainstream psychology and its ignorance of broader social and political issues. Instead, they share an interest in various critical ideas (e.g. social constructionism, post-modernism, feminism, marxism, etc.) and various qualitative and participatory methods of research (e.g. discourse analysis, grounded theory, action research, ethnography, etc.) and their relevance to understanding health and illness. Further, they share an awareness of the social, political and cultural dimensions of health and illness (e.g. poverty, racism, sexism, political oppression, etc.) and an active commitment to reducing human suffering and promoting improved quality of life, especially among those sections of society most in need.
Membership
ISCHP welcomes membership from anyone who is aligned with its aims, regardless of disciplinary affiliation. ISCHP has members throughout the world, who are mostly critical health psychology researchers, but members also come from other fields of psychology, as well as from the sociology and anthropology of health, illness and medicine, health sciences, nursing, media studies, communication studies, cultural studies and other disciplines. In 2013 the society has approximately 650 members in over 36 countries. Details on how to join ISCHP and thus receive the email updates can be found on ISCHP's website.
Newsletter and Facebook page
ISCHP produces a newsletter, 'Connected', once a year to keep members up to date on current critical health psychology activity. The latest issue and all previous issues can be found on ISCHP's website. ISCHP also has an official Facebook page, on which topical updates are posted about events, jobs and studies.
Conferences
The Society organizes a biennial conference. These conferences have been held in: St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada (1999); Birmingham, UK (2001); Auckland, New Zealand (2003); Sheffield, UK (2005); Boston, USA (2007); Lausanne, Switzerland (2009); Adelaide, Australia (2011); and most recently in Bradford, UK (July 2013). An archive of previous conference abstracts can be found on ISCHP's website. The next conference will be held Sunday 12 to Wednesday 15 July 2015 in Grahamstown in South Africa at Rhodes University. Details about the keynote speakers for the 2015 conference are available on the website. Abstracts for the 2015 conference can be submitted here. Details on the different format of abstracts that can be submitted can be found here.
Bibliography
- Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine.
- Journal of Health Psychology.
- Antonia C. Lyons & Kerry Chamberlain (2006). Health psychology: A critical introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- David F. Marks, Michael Murray, Brian Evans & Emee Vida Estacio (2011). Health psychology: Theory, research and practice (3rd ed.). London: Sage.
- Michael Murray (Ed.) (2004). Critical health psychology. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Poul Rohleder & Antonia C. Lyons (Eds.) (2014). Qualitative research in clinical and health psychology. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
- Carla Willig & Wendy Stainton-Rogers (Eds.). (2007). Handbook of qualitative research in psychology. London: Sage.