Psychiatric survivor and leading advocate Leah Harris reads her powerful poem “I Was a Teenage Mental Patient” and discusses how communities can work to prevent suicide by looking beyong mainstream approaches and rethinking our alienating school system.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:36 — 47.3MB)

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Freedom Center co-founder Oryx Cohen talks about how men can recover and heal from trauma, and creating a trauma-informed mental health system. Oryx also discusses the creation of the new Recovery Learning Community in Western MA.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:22 — 48.0MB)

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Phenix City, Alabama mobile DJ John Rice describes how he spent decades on neuroleptic drugs after being dragged into the psych system in the Deep South, and his discovery of Jamaican dub reggae music as a pathway to recovery and spiritual connection. An amazing interview.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:50 — 48.4MB)

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Psychotherapist and MindFreedom activist Matthew Morsey discusses the deeper meaning of “psychosis,” his own healing journey, and his past work at a unique center that focused on facilitating recovery from what are classified as “major mental disorders.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:55 — 50.3MB)

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Longtime consumer-survivor movement leader and pioneer in recovery education Pat Deegan talks about her story surviving a schizophrenia diagnosis, empowered medication decisions, and her development of innovative assisstive technology.

http://www.patdeegan.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:50 — 52.1MB)

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Psychologist and advocate with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and the Marijuana Policy project, Mitch Earleywine discusses medical marijuana, dangers and uses, and the relationship between marijuana and psychosis.

NORML http://www.norml.org
the Norml podcast http://www.normlaudiostash.com
the Marijuana Policy Project http://www.mpp.org

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:54 — 51.2MB)

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July 2007: psychiatric survivors from the Freedom Center in Northampton MA pushed a bed across town and held a rally and speakout against local mental health mistreatment, including at Cooley Dickinson Hospital and ServiceNet. With activists Molly Hurter, Keeley Malone, Chaya Grossberg, Oryx Cohen, Amy Bookbinder, and Abigail Adams.

http://www.bedpush.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:19 — 50.7MB)

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Independent journalist Evelyn Pringle writes extensively on Big Pharma corruption and the role the mainstream media plays in covering it up.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:57 — 48.5MB)

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Hurricane Katrina special, with Aby Adams and Will Hall of the Freedom Center discussing their trip to New Orleans to do volunteer relief work, and the questionable role of the mainstream mental health industry in recovery efforts.

Check out their trip report on the Freedom Center News page.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:01 — 42.1MB)

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Gary Greenberg, journalist for Harpers, the New Yorker, Rolling Stone and others, discusses being a subject in a clinical drug trial, how depression is manipulated by advertising and Big Pharma, and the social medicalizing of experience.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:47 — 47.5MB)

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Two topics: A Northampton, Massachusetts woman talks about her near-fatal drug reaction to an off label prescription of Lamictal, and Brooklynne Michelle discusses the Mosh Knit podcast — about knitting and bipolar.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:58 — 31.2MB)

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Riot Grrl instigator Bonfire Madigan Shive talks about her family, the mental health system, living outside the mainstream and her creative inspiration as a visionary musician.

http://www.bonfiremadigan.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:15 — 47.0MB)

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Longtime Freedom Center ally Mt. Holyoke College Professor Gail Hornstein discusses first-person accounts of people who have lived through madness, and previews her upcoming book Agnes’s Jacket.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:29 — 49.0MB)

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UK psychiatrist Philip Thomas discusses the globalization of psychiatry and pharmaceutical company expansion world-wide, including how community empowerment and traditional ways of care can challenge western individualism based medical model of mental health.

Check out Phil’s book Post-Psychiatry: Mental Health in a Postmodern World, and his essay “Challenging the Globalization of Psychiatry”, both written with Irish psychiatrist Pat Bracken.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:01 — 46.8MB)

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John Horgan, who has written for Scientific American, Discover, and the New York Times, talks about neuroscience, genetics, the placebo effect psychedelic drugs, and more.

John is the author of The Undiscovered Mind: How The Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation, Rational Mysticism, and The End of Science. He also hosts a video blog at http://www.bloggingheads.tv

http://www.johnhorgan.org

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:59 — 52.2MB)

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