Personal Stories

Long time Icarus Project organizer, open source computer software architect, and graduate doctoral student Jeffrey Goins discusses his psychiatric experiences and insights from the world of technology applied to the world of madness.

Topics include the Eli Lilly Zyprexa memos scandal and intellectual property rights; freedom in a surveillance society; prophecy and ancient wisdom, and the “end of forgetting.”

Oregon Mental health counselor Ron Unger discusses his experiences with altered states of consciousness, and how cognitive behavioral therapy can be a useful alternative to medication and mainstream psychiatric treatment. Ron is a longtime organizer with the human rights organization Mindfreedom International, and his website is http://www.recoveryfromschizophrenia.org/blog/

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

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

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

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.

Psychiatric survivor and leading advocate Leah Harris reads her powerful poem “I Was a Teenage Mental Patient” and discusses how communities can work to prevent suicide by looking beyong mainstream approaches and rethinking our alienating school system.

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.

Phenix City, Alabama mobile DJ John Rice describes how he spent decades on neuroleptic drugs after being dragged into the psych system in the Deep South, and his discovery of Jamaican dub reggae music as a pathway to recovery and spiritual connection. An amazing interview.