Madness Radio

How do decriminalizing drug use and sex work advance mad liberation? What lessons can psychiatric survivors learn from the harm reduction movement? Caty Simon's activist leadership spans the low-income rights, psychiatric survivors, sex worker, and drug users union movements, and she was a key organizer at Freedom Center in Western Massachusetts. Caty is on the […] The post Sex Drugs Harm Reduction | Caty Simon first appeared on Madness Radio.

Legendary psychiatric survivor activist Irit Shimrat escaped psychiatric incarceration to become a leading anti-psychiatry organizer. Co-founder of the Ontario Psychiatric Survivors' Alliance, Irit edited the Canadian magazine Phoenix Rising: The Voice of the Psychiatrized and wrote Call Me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement, bringing together the stories of many leading activists. Irit shares her […] The post Escaped Lunatic | Irit Shimrat | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

Do grieving goats lick psychedelic lichen? Altered states are part of nature, used by plants and animals for survival(!). How does ecology reveal the evolutionary – and spiritual – purpose of psychosis? Steven Morgan, psychiatric survivor and trainer in Intentional Peer Support, led the Another Way sanctuary and was project director for Soteria Vermont. Today […] The post Visionary Ecology | Steven Morgan | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

Please share widely! Survey on electroconvulsive therapy – electroshock therapy – for patients, family, and friends. John Read, survey researcher and professor at University of East London, is interviewed by Jessica Gallinger. www.ectsurvey.com www.electroshocksurvey.com The post Electroconvulsive Therapy Survey | John Read | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

Will Hall's June 2024 Grand Rounds talk at University of California San Francisco Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, titled “New Visions of Psychosis: Abolition as Clinical Best Practice.” Video here: https://youtu.be/adYrzmJ2w50?si=nwAQBM2F6oYmbShe transcript here. The post Grand Rounds UCSF Psychiatry – Will Hall – Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

Is madness dysfunction and breakdown – or part of human evolution that helps us survive? Writers going back to Hippocrates saw madness as the organism's way to cope with its environment, so why has this view almost disappeared today? Justin Garson, professor of philosophy at Hunter College and author of Madness: a Philosophical Exploration, joins […] The post Philosophy of Madness | Justin Garson | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

What can R.D. Laing, madness, and Star Trek teach us about the end of the world – and saving it? Will Hall reads “Can Madness Save the World? Where R.D. Laing—and Star Trek—Meet,” published on Mad In America March 14, 2024. The essay draws on the original series Star Trek episode City on the Edge of […] The post The End of the World | Will Hall | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

Does hearing God's voice make you mentally ill? Will psychiatry help you cope with grief and rejection – or make things worse? After a distressing romantic breakup Alison Smith went to her college clinic for help – and was locked up, drugged, and labeled psychotic. Positive and mysterious voices – including visions of Jesus – […] The post Crazy or Religious? | Alison Smith | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

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) www.dinatyler.com The post UCSF Grand Rounds | Dina Tyler | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

Audiobook mp3 of Chapter 7 “A Ten Day Voyage”, from The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise, by R.D. Laing, read by Will Hall. Full book .mp3 (cntrl/rtclck save as to download): http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookFULL.mp3 Full book as chapters on this YouTube playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMya78GAdrpxtOjEayvMp1lC88ce21kUb Individual chapters as .mp3 (ctrl/rtclick to save as): http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh1.mp3 http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh2.mp3 http://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh3.mp3 […] The post A Ten Day Voyage | R.D. Laing Politics of Experience Audiobook | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

Why are assault, kidnapping, and torture illegal – unless you have a psychiatric diagnosis? Is psychiatry's legal double standard as unjust as a double standard for being female or Black? Do equal rights for the disabled mean equal rights for mad people –  because society treats us as disabled? Does disability justice mean psychiatric abolition […] The post Abolition Is Disability Justice | Tina Minkowitz | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

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 […] The post Abolish Psy? | Craig Newnes | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

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 sates and madness. Paris […] The post Flight From Trauma | Paris Williams | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

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 contextually, tragedy as potentially transformative, the psychiatric survivor […] The post Rethinking Therapy | Will Hall and Ryan Hofrichter | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

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 […] The post Youth Leadership | Felicity Krueger & Oryx Cohen | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

Are trauma, medication injury, and holistic health connected? Does Lyme disease infection relate to tardive dyskinesia from psychiatric drugs? Is there a spiritual purpose to debilitating illness? Monica Cassani is a psychiatric survivor and early leader in internet support with the Beyond Meds – Everything Matters website and community. Monica's struggle with chronic iatrogenic illness […] The post Lyme And Dyskinesia | Monica Cassani | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

Read this book! Can there ever be any justification for discriminating against people who have — or are labeled with — psychiatric disabilities? Is denying equality before the law based on a psychiatric diagnosis always unacceptable, unnecessary, and abusive? Journalist and community development activist Rob Wipond's new book Your Consent Is Not Required: The Rise […] The post Consent Not Required | Rob Wipond | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

Should we reform – or abolish – psychiatry? Can capitalism provide mental health, or do we need some kind of socialism or anti-capitalism? Vesper Moore is a leader in the youngest wave of the psychiatric survivor movement; he was radicalized against psychiatry as a teen when his mother sought help and met medical violence instead. […] The post Abolish Psychiatry | Vesper Moore | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

When Karin Jervert withdrew from 5 psychiatric medications the conflicting voices and forces in her head became pathways to art and spirit. Through Buddhism and earth-based ceremony Karin discovered a new world – and a new sense of self – from her suffering. Co-hosts Jacks McNamara and Will Hall discuss art, ancestors, and the nature […] The post Tea with Spirit | Karin Jervert | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

When Cassie Wilson experienced mental distress due to an internship setting triggering past trauma memories, she called student counseling – and then police came to her home, handcuffed her, and detained her in a hospital for 6 days. In this episode Cassie,  a psychiatric survivor and student of human rights and neuroscience, discusses with co-hosts […] The post Psychiatric Incarceration | Cassie Wilson | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

Mad Camp is Coming! July 20-24 2023 mad people are gathering for summer camp in the forested mountains two hours north of San Francisco. You heard that right! Swimming, hiking, campfires, hanging out, napping, dancing, music, art, dancing, the stars… Mad Camp is all about community friendship and connection. And there are also stirrings of […] The post Mad Camp July 20-24 2023 | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

The essay from Mad In America Sept 2021 “Ending The Silence Around Psychedelic Therapy Abuse”, read by Will Hall: Michael Pollan's hugely influential new book on psychedelic medicine, How to Change Your Mind, is overly enthusiastic and largely uncritical. All the new hype and questionable science about miracle treatments as the next wave of cures […] The post Psychedelic Therapy Abuse: Ending the Silence | Will Hall | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

What if we just started having conversations about how to help each other through hard times? And took the time needed to really have discussions and hear the experiences of mad people? Erick Fabris is a psychiatric survivor activist and organizer based in Toronto Canada, and was part of the West End Survivors in Toronto […] The post Mad Conversations | Erick Fabris | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

What does a life dedicated to love and freedom look like? Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales joins co-hosts Jacks McNamara and Will Hall to explore the most important questions of all — by way of dreams, peace activism, and living in community. Laura-Marie is a queer traveler, maker of zines, radical mental health-er, fat liberation-er, […] The post Love Is a Skill | Laura-Marie & Jacks McNamara | Madness Radio first appeared on Madness Radio.

Join us for an in-depth and practical deep dive into trauma therapy — from the perspective of three counselors/coaches at the leading edge of personal healing and social change. Will Hall and co-host Jacks McNamara team up to discuss trauma healing and collective liberation with somatic therapist and coach Phillippe Citrine (ze/zir/zirs). Phillippe works with […]

Just in time for the holidays, a chapter from Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness: “Christmas Vacation in the Schizophrenia Factory,” a personal account from Will Hall from a visit back to visit his family for Christmas, first published in 2015. (Everything is better now.) You can purchase Outside Mental Health at your […]

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 […]

Nedra Deadwyler of Atlanta Georgia's Civil Bikes interviews Madness Radio's Will Hall about bicycles, mental health, and human liberation, for the KBOO FM Bicycle Show. https://www.nedradeadwylerconsulting.com/ http://www.civilbikes.com/

Jay Mahler was one of the originators of the psychiatric survivors movement in the 1960s, joining protests with the Free Speech Movement at the University of California Berkeley- the beginnings of protest against the US war in Vietnam – and then dedicating his life to ending forced treatment and protecting psychiatric patient rights. He was […]

Survivingantidepressants.org is one of the leading and longest running communities of mutual and and peer self-help around psychiatric drug withdrawal. Adele Framer – alto strata – founded the site in 2011 and shares her experience and learning on supporting people coming off antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and other medications, including the emerging field of […]

In this guest podcast, Jason Wright of Oddball Magazine sits down with Madness Radio host Will Hall, author of the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, to discuss mental health abolition, harm reduction, democratic socialism, and more in a far ranging conversation. You may have noticed the world is falling apart, time to […]

At the Madness Radio book launch a few years ago writer and poet Susie Meserve read her creative nonfiction essay “A Little Crazy,” included in the anthology Show Me All Your Scars: True Stories of Living With Mental Illness and featuring an intimate (and not entirely flattering) portrait of her boyfriend at the time in […]

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.

Jyl Ion hears voices, but she refuses to view these non-ordinary experiences as a sign of mental illness. Instead Jyl came off 16 years of multiple toxic medications, talks to her ancestor spirits and has reclaimed access to unsanctioned knowledge. She struggled through the aftermath of sexual violence and was bedridden for two years of […]

Do bipolar and psychosis have a healing potential blocked by suppression, medications, and avoidance? What if we could help people safely and intentionally explore, express, and understand these frightening states? Can breathwork ceremonies open the doors of perception like psychedelics — but without the drugs or risks? Are journeys into altered states too dangerous for […]

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 […]

After taking the psychedelic drug ayahuasca Martha Sneyd went into an extended altered state diagnosed as psychotic. Her terrifying ordeal ignited a spiritual initiation that eventually brought gifts of awakening, insight, and compassion. How did Martha emerge from her ecstatic journey through a mythic, archetypal world to become an advocate and teacher? What lessons can […]

What is at the root of world violence? How does psychiatry re-create dynamics of humiliation and shame that drive people crazy? Is there a just and equitable way out of the spirals of attack and counterattack tearing humanity apart? Evelin Lindner was nominated 3 times for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work internationally to […]

Audiobook mp3 of Introduction and Chapter 1 “Persons and Experience”, from The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise, by R.D. Laing, read by Will Hall. Additional chapters on this YouTube playlist (full audiobook as a single .mp3 forthcoming) www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMya78GAdrpxtOjEayvMp1lC88ce21kUb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._D._Laing          

What does it mean to be called “crazy” in a crazy world? Listen to the free audiobook of the Preface to Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness, written and read by Will Hall. Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness reveals the human side of mental illness. Based on ten years of […]

Voice hearers, mystics, visionaries, and mad people are found throughout the scriptures of Judaism. What does Jewish theology have to teach us about madness and psychiatric diagnosis? How can modern Judaism show the way to new responses to extreme and altered states, in our communities and ourselves? Caroline Mazel-Carlton is a survivor of psychiatric crisis […]

What are the key ingredients of alternative mental health programs – and what makes them different and successful? Connor Tindall followed his calling to become a a therapist after confronting mistreatment by a psychotherapist as a teen. He went on to work at the innovative Soteria House Alaska, a hospital alternative where compassionate respect for […]

Can the breakdown of psychosis show the way forward to spiritual breakthrough? Is there a path through the depths of mental health crisis independent of hospitals, doctors, and therapists? Adrian Bernard was labeled a chronic schizophrenic and spent 20 years living on a disability check. After surviving a spiritual ordeal tested by God he is […]

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, and author of While Psychiatry Slept: Reawakening the Imagination […]

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 […]

What does healthcare become when science is limited by a mechanistic, machine view of reality? How does a mechanistic view shape concepts of mental health and illness – and deny the fundamental aliveness of human beings? What does the study of living systems teach us for creating a different, more holistic vision? Fritjof Capra, theoretical […]

Does a diet without animal products improve mental health? Why can changing to plant based nutrition be so hard to sustain? And are people’s food ethics a symptom of eating disorder or neglected self care? Sabrina Louise, a vegan educator, consultant at Portland Community College, and ecstatic dance DJ, discusses how to transition away from […]

How can people come off psychiatric medications in the safest way? What are the key lessons and vital ingredients for leaving psychiatric care? Is there life after meds? Laura Delano spent 14 years as a psychiatric patient before she left behind her psychiatric diagnoses and reclaimed herself. Today she is Director of the Inner Compass Initiative […]

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 […]

Is psychosis a journey and a breakthrough to somewhere more authentic? Should unhappy people be made to adjust to a mad society? Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing was a fierce critic of the mental health system, and saw madness as a rational adaptation to irrational family and social constraints. Laing’s compelling prose, acute intellect, and spiritual […]

Is madness breakdown or initiation into a spiritual calling? Crazywise is a documentary film that explores the meaning of psychosis from the perspective of traditional cultures and shamanism, following the stories of people struggling with extreme states, spiritual awakening, and the mental health system’s failures. Filmmaker Phil Borges is an award winning photographer and filmmaker […]