Youth

Can teens lead their own mental health education? Are suicidal feelings and self harm “contagions” that young people shouldn’t talk about? How can mutual aid and peer support solve our youth mental health crisis? Felicity Krueger emerged out of trauma, anxiety, and the challenges of multi-racial adoption to become a leading teen advocate in Kentucky and nationwide. Felicity joins Oryx Cohen and co-hoist Will Hall to discuss her work today, including training youth in Emotional CPR – a peer support response to distress and an alternative to police and pharma. (Transcript here.)

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Voices-PJ-Moynihan/dp/B0821RFTJY
https://youthmovenational.org
https://kypartnership.org/ky-youth-m-o-v-e
www.power2u.org
www.emotional-cpr.org

You’re shut inside and it’s time for a children’s book! For this episode we’ve selected 1999’s The Iceling by Will Hall.

Do early psychosis programs serve healing – or function as surveillance and control? Are treatments for paranoia actually themselves forms of paranoia, based on scientific racism and white supremacy? By defining and enforcing “normal” does psychiatry wage a war on the imagination?

Rachel Jane Liebert is a multi-media artist and Critical Psychology senior lecturer at the University of East London, using feminist research to decolonize modern psychiatry. Her new book Psycurity: Colonialism, Paranoia, and the War on Imagination brings her background as a Pakeha (white/settler) New Zealander to free madness from whiteness and express the imaginative potential of states labeled paranoia. 58 min version

https://bit.ly/2ohWcQI
https://racheljaneliebert.com/
https://uel.academia.edu/racheljaneliebert

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What’s it like to be a teenager in a psychiatric hospital? What’s it like to be a queer pregnant teenager? And is it true that friends do make the best medicine? Nina Packebush explores these questions and more in her groundbreaking debut young adult novel, Girls Like Me. Girls Like Me is an In the Margins 2018 recommended book and a Lambda Literary Finalist.  Nina is a queer-identified, grown-up teen mom, writer, zine maker, and mental health advocate – as well as Madness Radio Producer. www.ninapackebush.com
www.wehaveraisedpresidents.org

What is it like to hear voices — and are all voices harmful or can they also be helpers? What does voice hearing say about the human mind – and the society we live in? And how can we support people who hear voices? Lisa Forestell has heard voices since she was a child. She is an organizer with the Hearing Voices Movement and with the Western Massachusetts Learning Community, a mutual support initiative run by and for people with lived experience of unusual and extreme states of mind labeled as “mental illness.” http://www.westernmassrlc.org/

Hearing Voices USA

Does psychotherapy cover up issues of power and social justice? Are talk show therapists providing help, or blaming individuals for their problems?

David Bedrick, counselor, attorney, and author of Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology, discusses how to discover profound meaning in our struggles by taking the time to understand the deeper context of our lives.

http://talkingbacktodrphil.com

How can family members help a relative in extreme crisis — instead of worsening the situation? Is there a way out of treatment power struggles and arguments about “insight”? And what do families need to change about themselves?

Psychiatric survivor Krista MacKinnon, formerly at Toronto’s Family Outreach and Response program and now Director of Families Healing together, discusses practical methods for turning family relationships into tools for healing.

http://www.familieshealingtogether.com
http://www.practicerecovery.com
http://kristamackinnon.net
http://www.familymentalhealthrecovery.org

What do you do when medications for your emotional problems become worse than the problems themselves? Laura Delano went to a psychiatrist at age 18, and for the next decade was prescribed nineteen different psychiatric drugs. After devastating physical and emotional effects, she began a journey to become medication free — and re-discover who she is. What lessons did she learn?

Laura blogs regularly about her experiences at Mad in America, works for a mental health agency in Massachusetts, and is an advocate for drug alternatives and safe withdrawal.

http://www.madinamerica.com/author/ldelano/
(Link to coming off meds guide: http://willhall.net/comingoffmeds/)

Childhood sexual abuse is pervasive in our society, leaving lifelong wounds that affect men as well as women. Is it enough to hold perpetrators accountable, or are there deeper causes of abuse? Do police, courts, and child protection services help heal — or lead to more trauma? And how can body-oriented approaches move beyond the limits of talk therapy?

Child sexual abuse survivor Staci Haines, author of Healing Sex: A Mind-Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma and co-founder of Generation Five, discusses transformative justice and liberating society from child abuse.

http://www.generationfive.org
http://www.generativesomatics.org
http://bit.ly/MrJeRp

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Why are so many children being diagnosed bipolar? Do medications treat disease – or just keep children under control? What else can parents do when faced with difficult behavioral problems?

Sharna Olfman, Psychology Professor at Point Park University and editor of the book Bipolar Children, discusses the growing social and economic pressures to label children bipolar.

http://dai.ly/epbcoO
http://scr.bi/yFfoRN

Leah Harris was orphaned after both parents were diagnosed with schizophrenia and died from medication toxicity. Today she is a leading voice in survivor activism, and her powerful spoken word poetry, including “I Was A Teenage Mental Patient,” has been featured in publications including Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution, and DC Poets against the War: An Anthology. Leah is also the co-coordinator of the US Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry.

Buy her new cd “Take Refuge” at the National Empowerment Center: http://bit.ly/7f5kyN

http://www.myspace.com/dharmamamaleah
http://www.usnusp.org

What does it mean to be autistic, have Asperger’s, or be on the autism spectrum? Is autism a disease to be overcome, or a difference to be embraced? Is autism advocacy like mad pride activism?

Ari Ne’eman, a person on the autism spectrum and director of the Autism Self Advocacy Network, discusses the autism movement’s challenge to what we consider “normal.”

http://www.autisticadvocacy.org

What are the lasting impacts of taunting, teasing, and physical harassment between children? Why are kids who are different singled out and picked on? What can parents do if their children are victims of bullies?

Psychotherapist, parent, and process worker Dawn Menken, author of Speak Out! Talking About Love, Sex & Eternity, discusses her work with public schools and families to break the cycle of bullying.

dmenken(at)igc(dot)org

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

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