International

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

First Nations Ojibway activist and psychiatric abuse survivor Stella Montour of Thunder Bay Ontario, Canada talks about colonialism and racism against native people, how they affect mental health, and her work for change.

http://www.cmha-tb.on.ca

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

Latin America Program Director Alison Hillman of Mental Disability Rights International talks with Will Hall in Buenos Aires Argentina about the campaign to reform the country’s brutally abusive mental health system, and the work she and Will have been doing with the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales to support the emergence of the user/survivor movement.

http://www.mdri.org
http://www.cels.org.ar

Psychiatric survivor Krista MacKinnon talks about her experiences with extreme states and spirituality, and her current work as a family advocate with Toronto, Canada’s Family Outreach and Response Program, an innovative way of helping families from beyond the limits of the medical approach.

http://www.familymentalhealthrecovery.org

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.

Ireland Activist and Poet John McCarthy, Mindfreedom International representative to the United Nations, discusses being “normally mad,” recovery, the UN Disability Convention, and challenging system abuses, in dialogue with Will Hall and co-host Oryx Cohen.

John also responds to callers, and reads a very moving poem about the death of a friend in the system. A very popular show.

Laurie Ahern, Associate Director of Mental Disability Rights International, on advocacy efforts to end human rights abuses in psychiatric facilities in Turkey, Romania, Paraguay, Kosovo, and world-wide.

Check out their website at http://www.mdri.org

Peter Bullimore, of England’s Hearing Voices Network, on his experiences with madness diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia, including violence and extreme deterioration.

Peter discusses sexual abuse and how he worked with his voices to recover and become one of the world’s leading psychiatric survivor activists. He also tells the story of how he got the Paranoia Network of support groups started.

http://www.psychminded.co.uk/news/news2005/sept05/recoveryposition.htm

Amy Sanderson, Rufus May, and Andrew Wood discuss Evolving Minds, a visionary public forum and activist group challenging traditional mental health care in England, including the 2005 cross-country Bed Push protest against coercive psychiatry.

http://evolving-minds.co.uk
http://www.bedpush.com