Alternatives

Danielle, who works with a New York City policy NGO and is part of the activist Rockdove Collective, discusses the international Restorative Justice movement, creating effective mediation and community dialog as alternatives to the punitive prison-industrial complex criminal justice system. Danielle specifically focuses on using Restorative Justice for violent and serious crimes.

Check out www.rockdovecollective.org and www.restorativepractices.org

Inside Soteria House with Voyce Hendrix, original clinical director who worked closely with Loren Mosher. Soteria House was a non-medication, non-diagnostic label and voluntary residence treating severe psychotic breakdown. Recovery rates were much higher in this humane and egalitarian atmosphere — but the project was shut down because it challenged the pharmaceutical company pro-medication interests.

Voyce discusses how Soteria was different than mainstream facilities and describes the healing results it had.

More info on Soteria House at http://www.moshersoteria.com

Self-injury and cutting with Ruta Mazelis, psychiatric abuse survivor and editor for 17+ years of the acclaimed newsletter “The Cutting Edge”. Cutting, burning, head banging and other self-harm are discussed from the point of view of people doing them — as coping mechanisms that need compassion and understanding, not the force and judgment of mainstream psychiatry.

Check out http://www.healingselfinjury.org

Oryx Cohen and Will Hall of the Freedom Center discuss how to reduce and go off psychiatric drugs safely. Oryx is diagnosed with bipolar disorder and Will with schizophrenia, and both are medication-free.

They talk about their own experiences as well as general principles and things to keep in mind for anyone working to reduce or go off psychiatric drugs, lessons learned from 5 years of working with the Freedom Center support group and helping people reduce and go off drugs successfully.

Activist Carey Lamprecht on her experiences as a staffperson in high security locked facilities with violent children and adolescents, and her creation of successful alternatives to restraints and coercion, alternatives that were blocked by facility administrators. Carey is herself a psych survivor with a bipolar diagnosis.

Dr. Mike Smith, Director of Lincoln Recovery drug detox center in the South Bronx NYC, discusses the use of acupuncture to treat addiction, the war on drugs, and the NADA ear acupuncture protocol, which is the protocol used in the Freedom Center acupuncture clinic.

http://acudetox.com/about

Judi Chamberlin is a leading organizer with the psychiatric survivors’ movement and one of its earliest initiators. She is author of On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System and staff with the National Empowerment Center. Show is co-hosted by Cheryl Alexander.

http://www.power2u.org

Ashley McNamara, co-founder of the Icarus Project, discusses her struggles with experiences diagnosed as bipolar disorder, and her work organizing the Icarus Project, an alternative support network for people who challenge the medical and disease understanding of madness. Ashley also reads from her poetry and journal.

http://www.ashley-mcnamara.net