How can seeing visions and hearing voices be transformed into a spiritual gift for healing? What does the initiation ordeal into becoming a shaman involve? Gogo Ekhaya Esima was diagnosed with psychosis and confined in psychiatric hospitals before she became an initiated Sangoma healer in the Zulu tradition of South Africa. Today she is a certified Peer Recovery Specialist in mental health, a trauma survivor, and a spiritual teacher and was recently featured in the film Crazywise.

www.sangomahealing.com

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What is it like to hear voices — and are all voices harmful or can they also be helpers? What does voice hearing say about the human mind – and the society we live in? And how can we support people who hear voices? Lisa Forestell has heard voices since she was a child. She is an organizer with the Hearing Voices Movement and with the Western Massachusetts Learning Community, a mutual support initiative run by and for people with lived experience of unusual and extreme states of mind labeled as “mental illness.” http://www.westernmassrlc.org/

Hearing Voices USA

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Is mindfulness meditation about calming the mind and accepting things as they are? Or is it a force for social change and challenging oppression? Can meditation help us become intimate with our wild, primal and untamed creative force? Nirali Shah, certified UCLA mindfulness facilitator and teacher at Spirit Rock, has spent thousands of hours meditating, as well as serving in one of the largest slum communities of Asia. She currently teaches with technology companies such as Google as well as academic institutions and non-profits, with a focus on re-wilding the self.

http://www.niralis.com http://bit.ly/2nW1krF

https://www.spiritrock.org/InstructorDetails?calendarinstructorid=177996

https://gtalks-gs.appspot.com/talk/meditation-for-re-wilding-the-self

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Now available as an audiobook!  Based in more than 10 years work in the peer support movement,The Icarus Project and Freedom Center’s 52-page guide is used internationally by individuals, families, professionals, and organizations to support reducing and coming off psychiatric drugs. Includes info on mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, risks, benefits, wellness tools, psychiatric drug withdrawal, information for people staying on their medications, and much more. Audiobook read by Guide author Will Hall.

A ‘harm reduction’ approach means not being pro- or anti- medication, but supporting people where they are at to make their own decisions. Written by Will Hall, with a 55-member health professional Advisory Board, more than 50 collaborators involved in developing and editing, and now available in 14 languages.

The Guide and this audiobook are Creative Commons copyright and you have advance permission to link, copy, broadcast, and distribute. (Text version here: www.willhall.net/comingoffmeds).

Download the Audiobook here (rt/cntrl-click save as).

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What is it like to flee a war-torn country as a child? What lasting psychological effects do refugees face? Can peer support and trauma informed care lead to lasting recovery? Khatera Aslami Tamplen, an Afghan-American and the Consumer Empowerment Manager for Alameda CountyBehavioral Health Services in California discusses war trauma, the activist struggle to end involuntary commitment, and the value of letting people have a say in their own mental health recovery. pocc.org/ https://copelandcenter.com/facilitators/khatera-aslami

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Are psychiatric treatments, experts, and medications the best way for traumatized communities to heal their mental health problems? Could indigenous practices, including traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture, offer a different way forward — through grassroots community development?

Herman Garcia is the Vice President and Ryan Bemis Founder of Crossroads Community Supported Healthcare, which offers practical skills training to local healers in the violence-stricken communities of Ciudad Juarez and Sierra Tarahumara, Mexico. Joined by health promotors Maria de Jesus, Sister Maria de Rosario Cordova, and Gloria of the Rahrami indigenous group, they discuss supporting communities harmed by the War on Drugs, severe poverty, and inequality. Thanks to Cynthia Pompa for translation.

http://bit.ly/2gu2MPN

www.freedom-center.org/files/FreedomCenteracupuncture_brochure.pdf

www.freedom-center.org/files/TrainingGazetteAcupuncture3-06Newspaper.pdf

http://bit.ly/2d4UmfF http://www.americamagazine.org/issue/valley-sorrows

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rar%C3%A1muri_people

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Are beliefs in witchcraft and “voodoo death” not real? Do magical explanations of disease mean people are primitive and less educated? Or are stories and beliefs at the heart of reality for all cultures – including yours?

Frank Bures, author of The Geography of Madness: Penis Thieves, Voodoo Death, and the Search for the Meaning of the World’s Strangest Syndromes, looks beyond travel literature’s colonial superiority and explores how meaning, perception, and belief shape what we think of as “real” in disease and health.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/the-diseases-you-only-get-if-you-believe-inthem/479367/

http://nym.ag/2k0tKQa

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How does the legacy of colonialism affect mental health in India? Are women’s rights, spiritual freedom, and ant-colonialism intertwined? Do women who choose a path of spiritual renunciation have the same freedom as men? Where are human rights more respected: in traditional temples, or in hospital locked wards?

Bhargavi Davar’s mother Bapu was a psychiatric abuse survivor persecuted for her religious devotion. Bapu’s struggle inspired Bhargavi to found the Bapu Trust, where she leads advocacy for mental health reform and community development throughout Asia. Bhargavi is also a lead organizer with INTAR, the International Network Towards Alternatives for Recovery.

www.baputrust.com http://bit.ly/1Mkn3u9 http://bit.ly/1TY2Ap0

http://bit.ly/25KXMp2

www.intar.org

https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/12/03/india-women-disabilities-locked-away-and-abused

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What if psychotic experiences express historical and intergenerational trauma? Does one person’s emotional crisis reach beyond their own individual mind? Could synchronicities and meaningful coincidences guide recovery instead of just being “symptoms”?

Naas Siddiqui, a psychiatric survivor and therapist in training who founded the Spiritual Emergence and other Unusual Experiences student group, descended into altered states after withdrawing from psychiatric medications. She discovered how her Bangladeshi heritage shaped her madness, and found a unique pathway to use her visionary states to heal personal and family trauma.

http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/10/transmuting-historical-trauma/

https://www.madinamerica.com/author/nsiddiqui/

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What if psychiatry recognized that schizophrenia does not exist? How might diagnostic categories (left over from the asylum era) be replaced by spectrums of experience that show how psychotic experiences can also be normal? What if services were oriented around individuals, not the statistical groups of “evidence based” research? And could the mental health system as we know it, which defines health as the absence of disease symptoms, be replaced with a new definition of health, health as empowerment in life?

Jim van Os, professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at Maastricht University and member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Science with more than 700 publications, is one of the top one percent highly cited scientists in the world. His research combines with the experiential knowledge of people with lived experience of psychosis to envision a radically new direction for the mental health system. (Alternate 58 min version here.)

http://www.madnessradio.net/files/SchizophreniaDoesNotExist-vanOs-BMJ.pdf http://www.madnessradio.net/files/HuberHowShouldWeDefineHealthbmjd4163.pdf
http://www.brown.uk.com/schizophrenia/rossler.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/schizophrenia-reclassification_us_56b20834e4b01d80b2449334
http://bit.ly/1IYsEez

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The Families in Mental Health Crisis Act HR 2646 — The Murphy Bill — proposes drastic changes to US mental health policies. Will the Murphy Bill curb violence and improve care? Or will more forced treatment, medication, and hospitalization only enrich pharmaceutical and medical industry power and reinforce stereotypes at the expense of real human needs?

Leah Harris, psychiatric abuse survivor and organizer for the Campaign for Real Change in Mental Health Policy, completed an investigative report on the Murphy Bill’s potential impact on people in crisis, how the gun manufacturer lobby is involved, and the role of Otsuka Pharmaceuticals.

www.realmhchange.org http://www.ndrn.org/en/issues/mental-health/protect-paimi.html www.proteus.com/press-releases/u-s-fda-accepts-first-digital-medicine-new-drug-application-for-otsuka-and-proteus-digital-health/

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Is mental health about individual diseases, or the health of communities and countries as a whole? How do economic policies after the 2008 crisis impact disability rights, suicide rates, and community wellbeing? Are cuts in social spending really necessary for economic growth, or do they cause more problems in the long run?

Guardian columnist Mary O’Hara, author of Austerity Bites, discusses the devastating impact of austerity economic policies in Europe, the scapegoating mindset behind social spending cuts, and the dangers of pursuing similar policies in the US and globally. http://www.theguardian.com/profile/maryohara www.austeritybitesuk.com 
http://m.mh.bmj.com/content/41/1/40.full
 http://bit.ly/Ot9hzg

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Psychiatric survivor leader Oryx Cohen was at a national conference when a seizure suddenly launched him out of his body and into a visionary state of madness. Avoiding medications or hospitalization, friends held a hotel room vigil for Oryx for many sleepless nights, and then drove him 4 days across country to safety.

What surprising lessons – about the usefulness of medications, support, spirituality, and his own trauma – did Oryx learn? How can the fear of manic psychosis turn into healing?

http://healingvoicesmovie.com

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Is thinking a cognitive process of information input and output? Or do consciousness and emotion take place in our bodies – animated, moving, and responsive to the environment? And what would Darwin think of today’s focus on brains and neuroscience – is there an evolutionary way to understand the mind instead?

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, dancer, philosopher, and author of more than 70 journal articles and 9 books, including The Corporeal Turn: An Interdisciplinary Reader, The Primacy of Movement, and The Phenomenology Of Dance, explores her understanding of the evolution of mind. http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Movement_as_a_Way_of_Knowing
http://www.bodypsychyoga.com/Downloads_BCMT/ProgressiveRelaxation.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Putting-Movement-into-Your-Life/dp/149747695X

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Celebrated US President Abraham Lincoln also suffered from life-threatening depression. Did he view his “melancholy” as a treatable illness, as a punishment from God — or as a source of his gifts? How did Lincoln’s extraordinary leadership abilities arise from his struggle with extreme pain?

Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, explores the famous President’s battle with despair, suicide, and intense sorrow, and discusses what people with depression – and the medical establishment empowered to treat them – can learn from Lincoln’s suffering. www.shenk.net www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/10/lincolns-great-depression/304247/ www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/307439/ www.shapell.org/manuscript.aspx?lincoln-mccullough-civil-war-condolence

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