Activism

What is it like to hear voices? How do people learn to live with their voices, and are voices sometimes positive and helpful? What is the connection between voices and trauma?

Jacqui Dillon, voice hearer and director of the UK Hearing Voices Network, discusses how the movement of people who hear voices is creating self-help alternatives to traditional and often abusive mental health care.

http://www.intervoiceonline.org
http://www.caslcampaign.com

Why is ECT, electroconvulsive therapy or electroshock, so widely used today? How is the ECT industry manipulating research and public perceptions the way tobacco companies did about cigarettes? What are the real dangers of this lobotomy-era treatment?

ECT survivor Linda Andre discusses her groundbreaking new Rutgers University Press book, Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You To Know About Shock Treatment.

http://www.doctorsofdeception.com
http://www.ect.org

Blogger and former social worker Gianna Kali discusses her experience going into the mental health system after taking psychedelic drugs, spiritual emergence, decades of treatment with more than 30 different psychiatric medications, and the difficult process of coming off meds, drug withdrawal, and regaining her life.

Gianna is the creator of the Beyond Meds blog about mental health and coming off medications.

http://www.beyondmeds.com

Psychiatric survivor activism is a vital force changing American mental health care, leading the way in human rights reforms and challenging pharmaceutical company corruption long before the scandals of today’s headlines.

What is this history of the movement, what challenges does it face today, and are there dangers of cooptation and reformism? Join cultural anthropologist Gabriella Coleman to explore the lessons of the Mad Movement.

http://www.gabriellacoleman.org

UK clinical psychologist Rufus May descended into madness — convinced he was on a spy mission and that animals were robots, he even walked into a family gathering naked.

How did Rufus find meaning in these experiences, learn to live without medication, and become a successful psychologist and mental health advocate? Rufus was recently featured in the Channel 4 feature film The Doctor Who Hears Voices.

http://www.rufusmay.com

Marykate Connor, founder of Caduceus Outreach Services in San Francisco, talks about her innovative work helping homeless people with mental health problems. She discusses the criminal justice system, the decline of services since the 1970s, medication policies, poverty, and what led her to create one of the most innovative and effective homelessness programs in the country.

marykate_caduceus (at) sbcglobal (dot) net
http://www.caduceusoutreachservices.org

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 http://www.undercurrents.org/minds and check out the Sri Lanka project at http://www.art-2-art.org

Community organizer and writer Michael Gennarelli talks about his 8 years of psychiatric treatment as a child and his stays at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Michael reads his poetry about these painful experiences and discusses his activism, including an after school program for kids and the Misled Youth Network.

http://www.misled-youth.org
http://www.123communityspace.org
http://www.fountainhouse.org
http://www.theicarusproject.net

Recovery leader and survivor Ed Knight talks about Zen, Insight, and Christian meditation and “schizophrenia,” including discrimination against people with psychiatric labels at meditation retreats, the link between spiritual awakening and madness, and living beyond “managing symptoms.”

http://www.professored.com
http://www.recoverycircles.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.

http://www.thacmho.org.uk

Visionary writer and thought-provoking environmentalist Derrick Jensen talks about the human-caused ecological collapse of the natural world, family trauma, technological brainwashing, indigenous societies, Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing, and the importance of rage in an undeniably insane world.

http://www.derrickjensen.org

Capetown South Africa survivor activist Moosa Salie talks about mental health organizing in Africa and beyond, and work to establish the Ubuntu Center for alternative support.

Check out Moosa’s blog and the World Network of Uses and Survivors of Psychiatry at http://www.wnusp.net

Vara Adams survived forced hospitalization, drugging, and multiple electroshocks as a teen in Melbourne Australia. She went on to become a heavy metal-influenced songwriter about her experiences as part of the healing process. Show includes several of Vara’s songs.

http://www.varaadams.com

Psychiatric abuse survivor and human rights activist Celia Brown discusses working for change in the mental health system, including her ownn experiences and creating “supported decision-making” for people in distress.

Celia is President of Mindfreedom International and a board member of the National Association of Rights Advocacy and Protection.

http://www.mindfreedom.org
http://www.narpa.org

Angela Shelton is an award-winning Hollywood actress and filmmaker, who traveled across the US meeting other women named Angela Shelton and discovering how widespread sexual abuse is in our society. She discusses her film Searching for Angela Shelton and her work helping people heal from trauma.

http://www.angelashelton.com