Psychiatric Abuse

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

Award-winning journalist Philip Dawdy, formerly a writer with the Seattle Weekly newspaper, discusses how forced psychiatric treatment and drugging are ineffective responses to violent crime and the so-called “dangerous mentally ill.” Philip is the writer of the excellent blog about Big Pharma profiteering and mental health policy

http://www.FuriousSeasons.com

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

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

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

Two topics: A Northampton, Massachusetts woman talks about her near-fatal drug reaction to an off label prescription of Lamictal, and Brooklynne Michelle discusses the Mosh Knit podcast — about knitting and bipolar.

A harrowing film of six families devastated by the dangerous violence-causing effects of anti-depressant drugs.

http://www.prescriptionsuicide.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

Leading survivor advocate Darby Penney on the exhibit created from suitcases found in the attic of the old Willard State Hospital asylum in New York, illustrating the forgotten lives of patients there.

http://www.suitcaseexhibit.org

John Judge was active in the 1970s psychiatric survivor movement and is now special assistant to Congressperson Cynthia KcKinney. John discusses MKULTRA and other US psychiatric mind control experiments, which involved torture of thousands of mental patients. Judge also looks at the Jonestown massacre, LSD, and the convergence of Nazism with the roots of biomedical psychiatry.

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.

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

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