Announcement GlobalPsych/InterPsych Survivor and User Division * * * URL http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/gpp/coping.html * * * Ian Pitchford, the founder of InterPsych (IP), a series of e mail lists and databases, has created GlobalPsych (GP), a loose confederation of individuals and organizations interested in cognition, behaviour, health and education. Sylvia Caras has accepted his invitation to be the Director of the GP/IP Survivor and User Division of this undertaking. Even though GlobalPsych is establishing a user Division, Sylvia is also encouraging users and user interests to be included in the other Divisions, especially user research, user education, and user alternatives to traditional medical treatment. Ian has offered Sheffield facilities to host World Wide Web (WWW) Pages and e mail lists for people who experience mood swings, fear, voices and visions. WWW, ftp and e mail are all available and a Web Page has been created. Initial outreach will be to international and national user organizations (and not state and local groups unless they express a particular interest). One of the Web files is a list of international and national groups. (St Johns University is also available as a host in the United States and Internex Online in Canada.) Any information describing Survivor and User organizations that is submitted electronically by e mail or snail mail diskette can be added to the Web Page. You are invited to let us all know about your organization and your work. Because telling our stories and having them heard is important, our first project will be a *Coping Strategy Database*. This will be a large database maintained by GP/IP and consisting of individual stories from those who have themselves coped with all manner of mental distress, organized by issue coped with. This will be a database of the stories of people who experience mood swings, fear, voices and visions. There are other places for the stories of those who are secondarily involved, families, friends, advocates, carers, and others. The Sheffield software will anonymously count Web site access so that a measure of use will be recorded. This announcement is to invite you to submit your strategies. You may use your real name, a pseudonym, your e mail address, or use no name at all. If you ask for anonymity with your submission, your real name will be removed. Please include your opinion of the key word or words under which you would like your submission filed. Please submit essays by e mail to: Kevin Childs Or by snailing a diskette to Ian Pitchford. Only machine readable input will be posted. For more information about Strategies Database: Kevin Childs Kevin Childs Suite 402 621 Water Street New York, NY 10002 USA GP/IP and technical questions: Ian Pitchford Ian Pitchford Flat 6, 116 Whitham Road SHEFFIELD, S10 2SQ United Kingdom Survivor and User Concerns: SylviaC@netcom.com Sylvia Caras 146-5 Chrystal Ter Santa Cruz CA 95060-3654 USA Announcement first distributed 23 September 1995 URL http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/projects/gpp/coping.html