How does the terror of child abuse inspire the heights of spiritual awakening? Are risky behaviors with drugs and extreme sports also a search towards healing? Co-hosts Dina Tyler and Will Hall talk with Paris Williams, who has a PhD in clinical psychology and went through his own experience of extreme sates and madness. Paris took flight from extreme childhood trauma and became a world class hang glider pilot, competing world wide, soaring miles above the earth, and risking his life again and again. Today he works as a therapist for people with psychosis, including from a spiritual emergence and trauma perspective and as a teacher in Hakomi psychotherapy, and is the author of the book Rethinking Madness.

https://youtu.be/JRCRYLB5FWs
https://pariswilliamsphd.com
https://rethinkingmadness.com

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Therapist Ryan Hofrichter flips the mic on Madness Radio host Will Hall for a wide-ranging discussion about madness, psychiatry, and being a therapist. Topics include power in therapy, psychiatric diagnosis harms, naming ethical and professional dilemmas, working outside of the mainstream mental health system, understanding emotional distress contextually, tragedy as potentially transformative, the psychiatric survivor movement, preventing mental health crises by creating healthy communities, and more. Thanks Ryan for listening!

Full interview transcript and details on Ryan’s website here.

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Can teens lead their own mental health education? Are suicidal feelings and self harm “contagions” that young people shouldn’t talk about? How can mutual aid and peer support solve our youth mental health crisis? Felicity Krueger emerged out of trauma, anxiety, and the challenges of multi-racial adoption to become a leading teen advocate in Kentucky and nationwide. Felicity joins Oryx Cohen and co-hoist Will Hall to discuss her work today, including training youth in Emotional CPR – a peer support response to distress and an alternative to police and pharma. (Transcript here.)

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Voices-PJ-Moynihan/dp/B0821RFTJY
https://youthmovenational.org
https://kypartnership.org/ky-youth-m-o-v-e
www.power2u.org
www.emotional-cpr.org

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:58 — 52.6MB)

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Are trauma, medication injury, and holistic health connected? Does Lyme disease infection relate to tardive dyskinesia from psychiatric drugs? Is there a spiritual purpose to debilitating illness? Monica Cassani is a psychiatric survivor and early leader in internet support with the Beyond Meds – Everything Matters website and community. Monica’s struggle with chronic iatrogenic illness led her to discover personal renewal and spiritual awakening – and gain a deeper understanding of illness, healing, and the ecological nature of the self. (Alternate 58 min version here.)
Tardive Dyskinesia, Chronic Lyme Disease, and Infection – Mad In America 
Everything Matters – Beyond Meds 
MDs and systemic infections (Lyme and Tardive Dyskinesia)

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Read this book! Can there ever be any justification for discriminating against people who have — or are labeled with — psychiatric disabilities? Is denying equality before the law based on a psychiatric diagnosis always unacceptable, unnecessary, and abusive? Journalist and community development activist Rob Wipond’s new book Your Consent Is Not Required: The Rise in Psychiatric Detentions, Forced Treatment, and Abusive Guardianships is a devastating investigative exposé of the normalized assault, kidnapping, and torture that is forced psychiatric treatment. It is hard to conclude anything other than this abusive practice must be brought to an end. So what can be done? Rob and Will Hall discuss these issues and more, and delve into what voluntary alternatives are possible to force — and how to stop the current dominant medicalized system from suppressing these alternatives. Rob has written a blistering account of some of psychiatry’s biggest lies; please read this book (if you can – advisory of upsetting content), join the abolition movement, and help sound the alarm to finally put an end to any justification for forced treatment. (Alternate 58 minute version here.)
https://robwipond.com/

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Should we reform – or abolish – psychiatry? Can capitalism provide mental health, or do we need some kind of socialism or anti-capitalism? Vesper Moore is a leader in the youngest wave of the psychiatric survivor movement; he was radicalized against psychiatry as a teen when his mother sought help and met medical violence instead. Vesper joins co-hosts Jacks McNamara and Will Hall, two veterans of 15 years of movement organizing, to envision ending psychiatric harm and achieving real care for people in emotional distress. (Alternate 58 minute version here.)

https://linktr.ee/vespermoore
https://www.vespermoore.com/
https://madnessnetworknews.com/

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When Karin Jervert withdrew from 5 psychiatric medications the conflicting voices and forces in her head became pathways to art and spirit. Through Buddhism and earth-based ceremony Karin discovered a new world – and a new sense of self – from her suffering. Co-hosts Jacks McNamara and Will Hall discuss art, ancestors, and the nature of reality with Karin, who today is arts editor for Mad In America. Karin creates nonfiction essays, visual art, graphic narratives, and poetry that explore transforming trauma – including the trauma of forced psychiatric treatment. (Alternate 58 min version here.)

www.eventbrite.com/e/504023888017

www.something-wonderful.net/art-as-alchemy

www.medium.com/@karinjervert/five-poems-minus-one-7f2dce663908

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:08:43 — 157.3MB)

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When Cassie Wilson experienced mental distress due to an internship setting triggering past trauma memories, she called student counseling – and then police came to her home, handcuffed her, and detained her in a hospital for 6 days. In this episode Cassie, a psychiatric survivor and student of human rights and neuroscience, discusses with co-hosts Jacks McNamara and Will Hall her experiences in the psychiatric system and how this experience aligns with the violent and carceral dynamics of the system. Cassie wrote about this experience in an essay entitlted “At the Forefront of Medicine: My Summer Involuntary Hospitlization” which can be read in the Chicago Maroon. You can contact her at cassidyw312 (at) (gmail) (dot) com. (Alternate 58 minute version here.)

At the Forefront of Medicine: My Summer Involuntary Hospitalization

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Mad Camp is coming! July 20-24 2023 mad people are gathering for summer camp in the forested mountains two hours north of San Francisco. You heard that right! Swimming, hiking, campfires, hanging out, napping, dancing, music, art, dancing, the stars… Mad Camp is all about community friendship and connection. And there are also stirrings of mad camps on the east coast in Europe! The all-volunteer Mad Camp organizers are now raising funds for scholarships — and we need your help and more volunteers!

Check out the Mad Camp website: www.madcamp.net!

Make a donation on our Donation page! www.madcamp.net

Mad Camp Email List Join Here: https://bit.ly/MadCampList

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The essay from Mad In America Sept 2021 “Ending The Silence Around Psychedelic Therapy Abuse”, read by Will Hall:

Michael Pollan’s hugely influential new book on psychedelic medicine, How to Change Your Mind, is overly enthusiastic and largely uncritical. All the new hype and questionable science about miracle treatments as the next wave of cures for mental disorders leaves out huge risks, including the risk of therapy abuse…

Also check the companion essay with more detail about my personal experience with psychedelic therapists Aharon Grossbard and Francoise Bourzat of the Center for Consciousness Medicine at www.medium.com/@willhall, with updates and links at the end of that essay.

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What if we just started having conversations about how to help each other through hard times? And took the time needed to really have discussions and hear the experiences of mad people? Erick Fabris is a psychiatric survivor activist and organizer based in Toronto Canada, and was part of the West End Survivors in Toronto that set up the first Mad Pride event in Canada, For ten years he worked with a patient’s council advising one of the country’s biggest hospitals, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health Care CAMH. Erick is the author of Tranquil Prisons: Chemical Incarceration Under Community Treatment Orders, a searing indictment of forced psychiatric drugging in the community. He is the founder of Crazy Talks and Mad Stories, a creative community event in Toronto, and is researching with the Mad Canada Shadow Report Group. (Alternate 58 minute version here.)

https://www.erickfabris.com/crazytalks/  https://madcanada.wixsite.com/shadowreport

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What does a life dedicated to love and freedom look like? Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales joins co-hosts Jacks McNamara and Will Hall to explore the most important questions of all — by way of dreams, peace activism, and living in community. Laura-Marie is a queer traveler, maker of zines, radical mental health-er, fat liberation-er, queer liberation-er, and autistic liberation-er, and co-creator of Disabled Resilience Permaculture. (Alternate 58 min version here.)

Laura-Marie’s sites:
www.listeningtothenoiseuntilitmakessense.com
www.ilikeyourstims.com
www.instagram.com/xtrikeslutsx
https://www.facebook.com/listeningtothenoiseuntilitmakessense
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3gDcxFhXldzUWozp26ykGg
https://soundcloud.com/robotmad

Las Vegas Radical Mental Health Collective:
https://lvrmhc.org

Jacks’ website: https://jacksmcnamara.net

And check out Jacks’ awesome podcast So Many Wings! https://somanywings.org

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:52 — 98.1MB)

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Join us for an in-depth and practical deep dive into trauma therapy — from the perspective of three counselors/coaches at the leading edge of personal healing and social change.

Will Hall and co-host Jacks McNamara team up to discuss trauma healing and collective liberation with somatic therapist and coach Phillippe Citrine (ze/zir/zirs). Phillippe works with visionary nonbinary, trans & queer people and relationships. Ze is based in the blue ridge mountains of North Carolina and works with clients internationally.

www.citrinehealing.space
www.phillippecitrine.space

And check out Jacks’ previous two interviews on Madness Radio!
www.madnessradio.net/madness-radio-queer-poetry-inbetweenland-jacks-mcnamara/
www.madnessradio.net/survivors-as-therapists-jacks-mcnamara-madness-radio/

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:20 — 128.9MB)

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Just in time for the holidays, a chapter from Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness: “Christmas Vacation in the Schizophrenia Factory,” a personal account from Will Hall from a visit back to visit his family for Christmas, first published in 2015.

(Everything is better now.)

You can purchase Outside Mental Health at your favorite independent bookseller or other retailer, and download a free ebook version at www.outsidementalhealth.com.

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Can survivors be therapists – and even better at it? Jacks McNamara – poet, trauma healing coach, and co-founder of The Icarus Project – joins Will Hall to discuss the calling to became a therapist/counselor/coach inspired by their own struggles and survivor mutual aid. What makes a “good therapist”? Is mutual aid and friendship enough or do we need professional healers? How does sharing your trauma and oppression with clients affect working as a therapist? What about licensing and credentials – can they get in the way of truly helping people? And is a therapist at heart a wounded healer?

Jacks McNamara is a genderqueer poet, parent, artist, activist, educator, performer, and somatic healing practitioner based on the Tewa land called O’ga P’ogeh, also known today as Santa Fe, New Mexico. Jacks is a Lambda literary fellow, and their first book of poetry, Inbetweenland, was released by Deviant Type Press in 2013. Co-author of Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness, Jacks is a neuro-creative psychiatric survivor who has toured the US and Canada offering workshops and performances. Jacks is the co-founder of The Icarus Project, now the Fireweed Collective, offering mental health education and mutual aid through a Healing Justice lens. Jacks is the subject of the poetic documentary film Crooked Beauty. Also check out Jacks’ previous interview on Madness Radio!

www.jacksmcnamara.net
www.madnessradio.net/madness-radio-queer-poetry-inbetweenland-jacks-mcnamara/
www.madinamerica.com/2012/06/crooked-beauty/
www.instagram.com/jacksmcnamara/

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:38 — 51.8MB)

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