Healing Trauma

How can we truly help combat veterans facing the aftermath of war? Is veteran trauma a sign of mental illness, or a healthy response to violent situations? Are medications and therapy the answer?

Paula Caplan, author of When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help Veterans, discusses healing the wounds of war by listening to the stories of veterans in our communities.

http://whenjohnnyandjanecomemarching.weebly.com
http://www.paulajcaplan.net

How did pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith Kline create “depression” in Japan — and a billion dollar market for its anti-depressant drug Paxil? Why do people diagnosed with schizophrenia recover more in Tanzania than they do in the US? Can western-style psychotherapy help tsunami survivors in Sri Lanka?

Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, discusses how mental disorders are cultural products, defined in the US and then exported around the world.

http://www.crazylikeus.com

Can therapy reach people in extreme states of “psychosis” — without using medications? Do we need to give a diagnosis to help someone? Why are counselors afraid to listen to their “mad” clients?

New York psychotherapist and filmmaker Daniel Mackler discusses how be defied social work training in his work with people labeled with schizophrenia and bipolar, and what he learned from recent visits to successful treatment alternatives in Northern Europe. Daniel is the filmmaker of Take These Broken Wings and co-author with Matthew Morrissey of A Way Out of Madness.

http://www.iraresoul.com

People who hear voices are no more violent than anyone else — but what about the small number of voice hearers that do actually commit violent crimes? Are medications and locked wards the best way to help those who act on their aggressive “command hallucinations?” What is the relationship between trauma, violence, and voices?

Dutch psychiatric social worker and Hearing Voices Movement member Erica van den Akker discusses her innovative counseling work with violent offenders in the Netherlands.

alpouvar1(at)tomaatnet(dot)nl

Labor doula and Icarus Project student organizer Annie Robinson talks about her experience in the mental health system as an adolescent, and how it led to her interest in changing medical birthing procedures and becoming a doula.

Annie discusses the trauma caused by doctor interventions in childbirth and its lasting effects on both children and mothers.

Anniewrobinson(at)gmail(dot)com
http://www.dona.org
http://www.motherfriendly.org

Editor Sabrina Chapadjiev discusses the new Seven Stories Press anthology Live Through This: On Creativity and Self Destruction, a rich collection of women artists sharing intimate accounts of cutting, alcoholism, suicide, abuse, madness and other self harm and how it relates to their creativity.

Authors include bell hooks, Bonfire Madigan Shive, Patricia Smith, Annie Sprinkle, Inga Muscio, Kate Bornstein, and Nicole Blackman.

http://sabrinachap.com/LTT

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

Warsaw Poland psychologist Bogna Szymkiewicz discusses “wounded states of consciousness,” what the mind and body do when trauma is activated, as well as how trauma affects our relationships and what we can do to recover.

http://www.bogna.info

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

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

Two interviews on psychiatric abuse: Angela Bischoff’s husband Tooker Gomberg died in a suicide after taking anti-depressants; both were prominent Toronto environmental and peace activists. Wayne Lax survived 80 shock treatments and multiple hospitalizations over thirty years.

Today both Angela and Wayne are waging campaigns to reform the mental health system.

http://www.greenspiration.org
http://www.ect.org

Icarus Project organizers Madigan Shive, Molly Sprengelmeyer, Will Hall, Neil Gong, and Sascha DuBrul visit Virginia Tech, site of the violent tragedy, and discuss campus mental health issues with students.

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.

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.

Dr. Pat Bracken, Irish psychiatrist, philosopher and co-author of the book Post-Psychiatry: Mental Health in a Post-Modern World, discusses community development as an alternative to individualistic and harmful Western mental health care world wide, including a critique of the PTSD diagnosis and its treatment based on his work in Uganda.