International

UK video activist and writer Mel Gunasena on her mystical experiences and forced psychiatric hospitalization. Mel is the director of Evolving Minds, a documentary film about spiritual experiences and what gets labeled "psychosis" by the mental health system. She also discusses the art therapy project in Sri Lanka she helped found to assist traumatized tsunami-affected children. See a trailer for the film at www.undercurrents.org/minds and check out the Sri Lanka project at www.art-2-art.org/.

Blacks in the UK are much more likely than white people to be locked up, put on drugs, and mistreated in the mental health system. Social scientist Philip Morgan of London's Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organization (THACMHO) discusses the legacy of slavery, survivor-run advocacy for system change, and an innovative project reclaiming Black identity through historical research. www.thacmho.org.uk

First Nations Ojibway activist and psychiatric abuse survivor Stella Montour of Thunder Bay Ontario, Canada talks about colonialism and racism against native people, how they affect mental health, and her work for change. www.cmha-tb.on.ca

Latin America Program Director Alison Hillman of Mental Disability Rights International talks with Will Hall in Buenos Aires Argentina about the campaign to reform the country's brutally abusive mental health system, and the work she and Will have been doing with the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales to support the emergence of the user/survivor movement. Check www.mdri.org and www.cels.org.ar.