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 experiences from the inside of locked wards, and from the outside – organizing to abolish them. (Transcript) 58 min version

Call me Crazy: Stories from the Mad Movement by Irit Shimrat
Spotlight on Institutional Psychiatry Edited by Irit Shimrat
Phoenix Rising: The Voice of the Psychiatrized
Don Weitz Legacy Project
Lunatics Liberation Front web archive
Go Nuts!

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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 he journeys in the wilderness to find healing and spiritual renewal, and with host Will Hall discusses psychosis as part of evolution, psychedelics in natural ecology, personal visions of Christianity, and communicating with bacteria through expanded consciousness. (Transcript) 58 min version
stevenmorganjr.com
www.madnessradio.net/madness-radio-reinventing-bipolar-steven-morgan/
Music by Steven Morgan
The World We Used to Live In by Vine Deloria Jr.
Intentional Peer Support
Soteria Vermont

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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

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Will Hall’s June 2024 Grand Rounds talk at University of California San Francisco Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences – where he was locked up as a young man! – titled “New Visions of Psychosis: Abolition as Clinical Best Practice.” Revenge is a dish best served cold. Video here: https://youtu.be/adYrzmJ2w50?si=nwAQBM2F6oYmbShe transcript here. 58 min version

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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 co-hosts Will Hall and Jessica Gallinger to discuss madness as a strategy, beyond the biological vs psychological debate. (Transcript) 58 min version

Justin Garson’s website Madness: A Philosophical Exploration

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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 Forever and on The Obvious, Laing’s speech at the 1967 Dialectics Of Liberation Congress. (Trust us, this all does makes sense!)

www.madinamerica.com/2024/03/can-madness-save-the-world-where-r-d-laing-and-star-trek-meet/

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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 – suddenly turned dark and persecutory, and Alison was driven into psychiatry-induced madness. Co-hosts Will Hall and Jacks McNamara join Alison to discuss religious voices – and psychiatric violence to suppress them. Alison’s writing has appeared in Granta, Real Simple, and PBS’s Stories from the Stage, and her acclaimed memoir Name All the Animals was named a ten best books of the year by People magazine (yes, that People magazine). A coming of age story, Name All the Animals opens on the day Alison’s brother died in a car crash and explores themes of grief, faith and sexuality. Alison lives in Northampton, MA and is working on a new memoir about hearing voices. www.namealltheanimals.com Transcript 58 min version

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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

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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):

https://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):

https://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh1.mp3

https://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh2.mp3

https://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh3.mp3

https://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh4.mp3

https://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh5.mp3

https://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh6.mp3

https://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh7.mp3

https://www.madnessradio.net/audio-extra/RDLaingPoliticsOfExperienceLaingAudiobookCh8.mp3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._D. Laing

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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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