Professionals

Can psychotherapy work against the mainstream system? What does it take to be truly compassionate as a professional? And what are the downsides of promising alternatives such as Open Dialogue? Michael Montgomery grew up in Ireland and experienced firsthand the impacts of trauma and violence; a meeting with a visionary friend introduced him to psychiatric oppression. Today he is an existential psychoanalyst in the tradition of R.D. Laing and trained in Open Dialogue, and he joins Madness Radio guest producer Nicki Glasser and host Will Hall to discuss his work. (transcript) (58 min version) www.drmontgomery.com

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Dina Tyler’s FANTASTIC, heartful, brilliant December 2023 Grand Rounds talk at UCSF Medical School, “Improving Outcomes for Psychosis: Psychiatric Survivor and Critical Psychiatry Perspectives.” Also available as a video. (Transcript) (Slides from talk) (58 min)

www.dinatyler.com
Journal of Humanistic Psychology

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Are psychotherapy’s assumptions completely misguided? What is really at stake in the research and practice of psychology? Is it possible to take a step back and see “psy” for what it is? Craig Newnes is a Jewish dad, grandad, musician, writer, and former director of one of the UK’s largest NHS Psychological Therapies Directorates, and he joins Will Hall to discuss a critical view of the entire psy industry. Past editor of the British Psychological Society clinical psychology division newsletter for 19 years, Craig has doctorates in History and Clinical Psychology and currently edits the Journal of Critical Psychology Counseling and Psychotherapy. He has published over 200 articles and 25 books, including the upcoming Psychomusicology, available from Egalitarian Publishing. (58 min version) (transcript here)

Racism in Psychology
Finniendo – an illustrated saga for children
https://www.egalitarianpublishing.com
Survivor Poetry
52 Ways to Change Your Life. 
Tearagh’t: a novel 
Teaching Critical Psychology 
A Critical A to Z of Electroshock 
Clinical Psychology: A critical examination 
Inscription, Diagnosis, Deception and the Mental Health Industry: How Psy governs us all 

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How does the terror of child abuse inspire the heights of spiritual awakening? Are risky behaviors with drugs and extreme sports also a search towards healing? Co-hosts Dina Tyler and Will Hall talk with Paris Williams, who has a PhD in clinical psychology and went through his own experience of extreme states and madness. Paris took flight from extreme childhood trauma and became a world class hang glider pilot, competing world wide, soaring miles above the earth, and risking his life again and again. Today he works as a therapist for people with psychosis, including from a spiritual emergence and trauma perspective and as a teacher in Hakomi psychotherapy, and is the author of the book Rethinking Madness. (58 min version) (Transcript here)

https://youtu.be/JRCRYLB5FWs
https://pariswilliamsphd.com
https://rethinkingmadness.com

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Therapist Ryan Hofrichter flips the mic on Madness Radio host Will Hall for a wide-ranging discussion about madness, psychiatry, and being a therapist. Topics include power in therapy, psychiatric diagnosis harms, naming ethical and professional dilemmas, working outside of the mainstream mental health system, understanding emotional distress in context, tragedy as potentially transformative, the psychiatric survivor movement, preventing mental health crises by creating healthy communities… and more. Thanks Ryan for listening! (58 min version)

Full interview transcript and details on Ryan’s website here.

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Read this book! Is discriminating against people who have — or are labeled with — psychiatric disabilities ever justified? Is denying equality before the law necessary in times of crisis – or does it open the door to widespread abuse and violence? Journalist and community development activist Rob Wipond’s new book Your Consent Is Not Required: The Rise in Psychiatric Detentions, Forced Treatment, and Abusive Guardianships is a devastating investigative exposé of the normalized assault, kidnapping, and torture that is forced psychiatric treatment. It is hard to conclude anything other than this abusive practice must be brought to an end. So what can be done? Rob and Will Hall discuss these issues and more, and delve into what voluntary alternatives are possible — and how to stop the current dominant medicalized system from suppressing these alternatives. Rob has written a blistering account of some of psychiatry’s biggest lies; please read this book (if you can – advisory of upsetting content), join the abolition movement, and help sound the alarm to finally put an end to forced treatment based on disability. (58 min version) (transcript)
https://robwipond.com/

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Can survivors be therapists – and even better at it? Jacks McNamara – poet, trauma healing coach, and co-founder of The Icarus Project – joins Will Hall to discuss the calling to became a therapist/counselor/coach inspired by their own struggles and survivor mutual aid. What makes a “good therapist”? Is mutual aid and friendship enough or do we need professional healers? How does sharing your trauma and oppression with clients affect working as a therapist? What about licensing and credentials – can they get in the way of truly helping people? And is a therapist at heart a wounded healer?

Jacks McNamara is a genderqueer poet, parent, artist, activist, educator, performer, and somatic healing practitioner based on the Tewa land called O’ga P’ogeh, also known today as Santa Fe, New Mexico. Jacks is a Lambda literary fellow, and their first book of poetry, Inbetweenland, was released by Deviant Type Press in 2013. Co-author of Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness, Jacks is a neuro-creative psychiatric survivor who has toured the US and Canada offering workshops and performances. Jacks is the co-founder of The Icarus Project, now the Fireweed Collective, offering mental health education and mutual aid through a Healing Justice lens. Jacks is the subject of the poetic documentary film Crooked Beauty. Also check out Jacks’ previous interview on Madness Radio!

www.jacksmcnamara.net
www.madnessradio.net/madness-radio-queer-poetry-inbetweenland-jacks-mcnamara/
www.madinamerica.com/2012/06/crooked-beauty/
www.instagram.com/jacksmcnamara/

http://www.santacruz.com/news/busting_the_mental_illness_myths.html
https://www.facebook.com/2ndStoryRespite/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtjP2nn6Nss
www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7_q3F5bNyk
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctoziyxsZwE&authuser=0
www.psychosissummit.com/copy-of-charles-heriot-maitland

Has modern psychiatry lost its soul? How can dreams, storytelling, and imagination help people in emotional crisis – including psychosis and madness? What lessons can we learn from shamanism, the placebo effect, and the importance of the doctor’s “bedside manner”? George Mecouch MD, psychiatrist, Jungian therapist trained in Process Work, and author of While Psychiatry Slept: Reawakening the Imagination in Therapy, discusses how to recover the lost art of healing in an era dominated by technology. transcript
http://www.bellysongpress.com/while-psychiatry-slept/
https://www.drgeorgemecouch.com/
Jung’s Lament

How is psychotherapy different when the therapist is also a survivor? What vital lessons must therapists learn from people who have experienced psychosis? If therapy is an imbalance of power between therapist and patient, how can therapists avoid the misuse of power and protect clients from harm? Olga Runciman, voice hearer, psychiatric nurse in locked wards, and survivor of a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, brings her experience with recovery to her work as a psychotherapist in private practice.

http://psycovery.com

https://www.madinamerica.com/author/orunciman/

What if psychiatry recognized that schizophrenia does not exist? How might diagnostic categories (left over from the asylum era) be replaced by spectrums of experience that show how psychotic experiences can also be normal? What if services were oriented around individuals, not the statistical groups of “evidence based” research? And could the mental health system as we know it, which defines health as the absence of disease symptoms, be replaced with a new definition of health, health as empowerment in life?

Jim van Os, professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at Maastricht University and member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Science with more than 700 publications, is one of the top one percent highly cited scientists in the world. His research combines with the experiential knowledge of people with lived experience of psychosis to envision a radically new direction for the mental health system. (Alternate 58 min version here.)

https://www.madnessradio.net/files/SchizophreniaDoesNotExist-vanOs-BMJ.pdf https://www.madnessradio.net/files/HuberHowShouldWeDefineHealthbmjd4163.pdf
http://www.brown.uk.com/schizophrenia/rossler.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/schizophrenia-reclassification_us_56b20834e4b01d80b2449334
http://bit.ly/1IYsEez

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What if you were the only one seeing coded messages, covert realities, and elaborate plots all around you? Does that make you out of touch with reality, “paranoid” and “psychotic?” Or is it real — but you are just so upset that everyone thinks the problem is you instead?

Tim Dreby, a psychotherapist and author in the San Francisco Bay Area, endured a life-threatening — and real — encounter with gangsters, police, and political conspiracy. He also survived a schizophrenia diagnosis, and today leads support groups for people facing overwhelming intuitions, coded messages, and conspiracies, helping them heal from trauma and regain control of their lives. fightingforfreedominamerica.wordpress.com outskirtspress.com/fightingforfreedominamerica https://www.facebook.com/Clyde-Dee-455156071353094/ http://amzn.to/1LIJrng

In schizophrenia really an “incurable illness” — or a state of chronic terror? Are there ways for psychotherapy to reach people in different realities? And can talk therapy offer a humane and empowering approach?

Bert Karon, psychoanalyst since 1955, co-author of the classic textbook Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia, and Professor of Clinical Psychology at Michigan State University, outlines psychoanalysis and discusses how his talking cure helps people diagnosed psychotic and schizophrenic.

http://psychrights.org/Research/Digest/Effective/BKaronTragedyofnoPsychotherapy4Schizophrenia.pdf

http://bit.ly/ZxwwNk
http://bit.ly/11CPtzO

Are there ways to reach people in states of madness? How do talking with ghosts, hearing voices, and seeing visions — as well as enduring family turmoil — relate to psychotic crisis?

When Dina Tyler discovered the meaning of life in an altered state, the treatment she received only inflicted further trauma. Dina instead embraced her madness as a guiding force for recovery, and found a way to leave labels and medications behind. Today she works as a counselor to youth experiencing psychosis, communicating across different realities with people driven away from traditional care.

Dina is the co-director of the Bay Area Mandala Project, co-founder of Bay Area Hearing Voices, and works with an early psychosis intervention program in Alameda County, California. She was awarded Peer Specialist of the Year by the National Council for Behavioral Health in 2015!

https://youtu.be/2rtBYHttOBg 

www.bayareamandalaproject.org

www.bayareahearingvoices.org