All right, were about to get the event started. You also much for coming. We are a packed house tonight. Welcome, were really excited to host the event tonight around, this is almost a twopart event for tonight, reading from the contributors of the book and then followed by a Panel Discussion and there will be q and a, all that amazing stuff afterwards but i just wanted to give you a big round of applause and thanks for coming out because its support from Community Members like yourself that independent booksellers can keep growing and continuing to be around. In fact, were opening up a new location in the south street seaport come august 1 id love to see you there. Just a few housekeeping notes for tonight , there will be an audience q and a after the Panel Discussion. Plus a chance to have a book signed so you will see books over here and behind that will move to the stable. For the q a portion we ask that you keep your questions concise and respectful and for the book make sure to pay for them on your way out. Times they just run away. The store will be open until 10 pm tonight so feel free to explore. The space is yours to enjoy. Were pleased toast for incredible panelists and a moderator was also incredible discussing weve been to patient which is a collection of poems and essays written by four people with lived experiences of Mental Health care systemin america. On the Mad Pride Movement to the Consumer Movement to trauma informed care, weve been to patient dedicated to finding walking alternatives to the Mental HealthIndustrial Complex. Often unexpected ways and places through sun ship, respect andcentering on the truth of the lived experience so without further ado, i want to bring up two of your panelists. [applause] its so good to see you, my name is Kelechi Ubozoh, one of the coeditors of weve been topatient. Im excited youre here to have a real conversation about health and share all of these Amazing Stories and have a great conversation. Im the coeditor of weve been to patient, im l. D. Green. I hope you enjoy the testimony of these voices and thank you very much for being here. Thank you random house for distributing us. Cant forget them hosting us. First up, we have casey gardner. Casey gardner is a queer poet and educator who writes both to heal and critique the intersections between identity and culture. He teaches with both poetry and digital storytelling and has been on three National Poetry slam teams. Shes pursuing her masters in english education ucsc, i think he already has her masters so these are a little old so welcome to the state casey gardner. [applause] high. All right, im going to preface this with the fact that this poem is a little old so bear with me, these are some older things about myself. I have one called occupational therapy. One year ago i was in the hospital. I asked myself what i was doing here besides keeping myself safe from the pill bottle next to my bed. I couldnt sleep in that place. They checked on us every 15 minutes, yelled in the hallway, sometimes i still smell the formaldehyde from the blanket and i think am i supposed to be there now . A year enough to be healthy . That question hangs in the air when i kiss you. You say you need more time to learn how to love yourself before you can love me. Three months, three months until im supposed to start seeing my future inside of you, three months until i move away, three minutes to read this poem. Is any ofthis enough . Lately ive been hearing everyone say the same thing. Art is not therapy. I introduce you to poetry, to art because i wanted you to get better. I started doing poetry because i wanted to get better but did i get better mark i had a panic attack before i wrote this. I did not eat orsleep enough this week. All things therapist told me to focus on before they would release me. I promise, i promised i wouldnt fall in love with anything that wasnt myself and now im so in love with you. I cannot eat or sleep even though eating and sleeping means my anxiety taste quiet. I came back from the hospital just in time to jump back into my heart like a bottle of pills, this was the cure for a while but the iic held the scars on my wrist have not healed over. Can you see how afraid i am going back to mark like i believe i am still just a single servingjello, a morning pill regime area and part of me is still in a room full of 5150 reading a poem because i knowthis is the only way i can heal. But if i could see that therapist again i would tell her this i got into graduate schoolyesterday. I spent three months in my moldy apartment investing in my future. Year ago i didnt think i had afuture. Couldnt go out in public without hearing all the voices of my demons superimposed on my friends. I made progress. I fixed my bicycle. Eating fruits, stopped talking to people who wanted to swallow me when my anxiety creeped into my nightmares, i changed. Everyone thinks im still a little crazy, that my chewed nails and shaking hands will mean i am sick but i am still different. Like yesterday, you kissed me and i told myself my health ismore important than this. Last night i was supposed to write a poem, memorize it, they get ready for the state but instead i made cupcakes. I played music and i am here writing about it now because that is more important than any applause is paid has held me in its arms saying do you love yourself today . That is more important than being the best writer or artist. I and my best self. And i am better than i was yesterday. And we are all better than we were yesterday and isnt that the most importantthing . Isnt that the best poem ive ever written . Thank you. Thank you casey. Welcome to the state, the writer ramona rio writes in the book as alisa mcgowan, big round of applause. Infiltrating the Mental HealthIndustrial Complex. The patient professional paradox. The Mental HealthIndustrial Complex functions on a division between Mental Health professionals on the one hand and Mental Health patients clients on the other. These Mental Health professionals have the authority to diagnose and label individuals as possessing a psychiatric and psychological disability. Supposedly, these Mental Health professionals are individuals who do not possess a diagnosis or suffer from Mental Health problems. Mental Health Professionals are psychologically quote, stable whereas Mental Health patients are psychologically quote, unstable. Patients and professionals are supposedly too distant types of people. This Division Operating patients from professional is rooted in hierarchies based on class, race and ability. Supposedly, a person cannot be a patient and a professional at the same time or in the same space. But i am, i am body both identities and experiences. On the one hand i look earned a bachelors degree in psychology and a masters in social work and have worked as a Mental Health therapist for over four years. On the other hand, i have gone through Substance Abuse treatment four times for my early adolescence into early adulthood. Shortly after obtaining my msw, i experienced a druginduced Mental Health crisis during which i was beaten and tasered by the police and psychiatrically hospitalized against my will. The affective disorder prescribed as my diagnosis. I regularly see a psychiatrist and therapist and i have been taking psychiatric medication ever since my Mental Health crisis. Identify myself as a social worker and therapist. Notwithstanding this, i also self identify with the history of the mad movement. And the antipsychiatry movement. I self identify as neuro atypical, a mad activist, and a survivor of Police Brutality and the Mental HealthIndustrial Complex. This brings me to name. This meant brings me to what i would like to name asthe patient professional. The Mental HealthIndustrial Complex stipulates those who are Mental Health professionals are psychologically stable and those who are patients are psychologically unstable, then my existence as a patient professional is a paradox. To be a patient professional is to inhabit a body, a mind , a space and a place between the binary of the patient and the professional. I understand the experience of being stigmatized for possessing a psychiatric disability and i understand that legitimate resistance of clients with whom i interact who vehemently reject the idea that they are mentally ill. Navigating this division between the patient and the professional is a task that i find requires almost instinctive complexity, creativity and nuance. [applause] next up we have jesse roth. Jesse is an author and an activist working at the intersection of storytelling, Mental Health and social justice. She is codirector of the institute for the development of human arts, a community of advocates who support growth and change in the Mental Health system. She has a degree in narrative she ecology. [applause] i. I also want to thank the others so much for putting this all together. Its so awesome. Id like to thank all the contributors. I get nervous in public speaking but im dedicating what im reading to my sister who i wish could be here with us tonight. This is all inspired by her. Also, im reading my thesis, part of anepilogue in the book. The heart of this anthology is a simple idea. One of the ways we can implement the recovery model is throughnarrative. The narrative model supports participants to reclaim complex situations and supports them to rewrite damaging stories instructing battle alternatives. This type of narrative inquiry is a new model for navigating Mental Health. This mode of thinking and sitters the unique stories of individuals and fosters a purpose for their participation in a system that is starkly not supported and excluded them. The act of translating a experience into a written one validates the fact that it happened. Textual evidence assigned meaning to an experience and makes it possible for a person to view a potentially painful experience from a distance. The discrepancy between the lives and textual cells by strategies for the future problemsolving of aperson , tightening their overall potential for growth. Writing is an empowering practice, it provides control and delivers a sense of satisfaction little else can. At the endof the day life is best understood when its told as a story. This dismissing the power of personal narrative amidst an instant essential voice in the conversation about Mental Health, thevoices of those lived experiences. Mental health is too delicate, too intertwined with lived experience to be assigned a single medical eyes story or worse, to ignore the presence of story altogether. The editors and contributors of this volume firmly believe that Mental Health research and practice dan to be improved by privileging the voices of those living with mental difference. Such as this illuminate the experience of Mental Health for readers who would not otherwise understand. The reading experience allows its audience to bear witness to our stories which have the potential to foster empathy and reduce month. How we heal is implicit within the unique story of our lives. Thank you so much. Next up we have to sascha altman dubrul, director of support media projects, has a masters degree as a recovery specialist, trainer at Columbia Center for practice innovations and is currently the training director for the institute for the development of human arts. So heres the deal. Ive got three minutes and ive got a long essay im not going to read what im going to do is review the first paragraph and tell you a little bit about the context. The context is this. Three years ago right now i was finishing my masters in social work at hunter and i spent 12 years of my life working on this thing called interest project at a bunch of the people reading tonight have also been involved in and its a network of based Mental Health support groups and we started it because we were trying to change the language and culture of whats called Mental Health and Mental Illness. I went back to school because i saw that the Mental Health system needs to change and there are people who need to be on the inside but i also went back to school because i was looking for mentor ship and looking for more guidelines and trying to understand what it meant to be a clinician so the thing that i wrote called underground transmissions center of the marginalized, Collaborative Strategies for reenvisioning the public Mental Health system. And it was a 58 page paper that i wrote about working in a place called the parachute project, i was on a mobile Treatment Team and everyone on the team was trained in something called open dialogue which is a Family Therapy model and we were working with young people diagnosed with psychotic episodes. The thing about that team was that everyone who, half the people on the team were clinicians and half the people on the team were people who work here specialists which means there they were people diagnosed with a Mental Illness themselves and were working in the system and hada different perspective than the clinicians. I was a clinical intern on the team and when i got there i was like weights, and i quit clinician, michigan up here . Then i got interested in the working relationships between peers and clinicians so thats the context, let me redo the first paragraph. Its academic writing, its not the most allies writing we will see. Hopefully all right. And its kind of lofty, its kind ofgrandiose. I have a diagnosed bipolar disorder which means some people think im grandiose. The purpose of this paper is to lay the intellectual foundation for development of a new generation of Mental Health support services. These services will model cooperation between clinicians and the growing fears specialist workforce in the public Mental Health system and actively encourage the proliferation of a vibrant, independent here led movement has the power to creatively influence the current culture of Mental Health services. Is quite a sentence there. This Grassroots Movement would express its influence both within and outside of the public Mental Health system with a common sense of Core Principles based on selfdetermination and justice. That was the first paragraph, if you get excitedabout that, read the whole thing. Thank you. [applause] thank you so much sasha. All right. Next up we have leah harris, and intersectional feminist writer calling for a revolution in how we understand and respond to suicide. Her publications include world warrior, and busters, beltway poetry, covington post, madin america and truth out. Her story was featured in a documentary on suicide , the f word. Thank you so much, welcome leah. [applause] all right. I want to echo everybody elses thanks and gratitude to Kelechi Ubozoh and ld for making this possible. I want to read a poem called dear doctor which ofthem was the beginning of me taking my power back. Your doctor. On that proud glorious day you graduated from medical school you took an oath as old as hippocrates, remember . Above all, do no harm. Above all, do no harm. Do no harm. No harm. But the trouble is you thought you were doing good by warehousing us in that style, oppressive, inhospitable place you called the hospital. You practiced the highest form of tough love there is. So tough i could not seeno love nowhere. You place the blame squarely on our brains. Clearly on our serotonin flow, our synapses. Labeling us with whatever diagnosis on whatever page of your book you found appropriate at the time. You thought you couldturn us around. Make us into productive future citizens. Make us fit into this authoritarian sexist, racist, ageist, homophobic transforming, icould keep going. Generous society, your generation, the greatest generation. You always insisted that we were the problem and that you were the solution but your treatments, your cures, your directives issued from on high did not heal our brains. Did not open our hearts. They merely transformed these organs into impassive lumps of bitter rage. If anything dear doctor you taught me how to act. You taught me all the world is a stage. You pushed me to awardwinning performances. The award being life away from your indifferent eyes. Your pronouncements of orville. The indecipherable scribbles on the prescriptionpad. The infernal team minutes you gave me. In a word your doctor, the award was freedom or at least a glimmer. Perhaps i give you too much credit dear doctor, assuming that you saw us as something more than billable hours, business as usual. Another bed filled until the money ran out this time. Your doctor, youll never know in your ivory tower on the second floor of the lost team award how many years i spent sweating and struggling to undo all the harm you did with the best of intentions. Even my road to hell. I declare war on all you scribbled in my chart. Building a new chart. Charting a course of humanity and dignity with scribbles and shouts of my own and all the while hippocrates owns are twitching in their grave. Dear doctor. Thank you. Thank you leah. All right, so next up to the stage we have my amazing coeditor, ld green. She isa gender queer writer performer educator and help advocate. He coedited and contributed to we been to patients and has published and performed in many other venues. Ld writes poetry, nonfiction, speculative fiction and is a lambda literary fellow. He has an english professor at legatos college, welcome my coeditor. Thank you all so much for being here, thank you to the contributors. Im proud to be in this chorus of voices with you and thats kind of the theme of what i wanted to share with you tonight is my part of the introduction. Its segmented out but the part of the introduction that i wrote. As i write my part of the introduction to the book, all our contributors at our publisher brought into being i must admit i am filled with excitement and trepidation. I urgently want to claim my seat at this table and by doing that, i am compelled to disclose that i too am i Mental Health consumer. A psychiatric survivor. A lifelong patient. A Mental Health advocate with lived experience. That last one sounds best, safest but i must claim the others too. As a consumer i am frustrated with Services Rendered that have been insufficient at best. As a psychiatric survivor i am healing from the traumas inflicted on me by the Mental HealthIndustrial Complex. As a lifelong patient i have stories to tell about psychiatry and even therapies limitations. To say i am a Mental Health advocate and not just a survivor feels right but i must admit there isanother reason i would like to quote myself with the title experience. It feels neutral, it can suggest my suffering due to childhood trauma is housed within the realm of less signifying troubles. The bulk of my distress can be labeled as depression or anxiety but i feel compelled to disclose more and speak truth to power about what i have suffered and honor the strength of my condition. My reluctance to assert my mad pride stems from the capitalist power structure which is the very thing this book resists. Namely i fear the repercussions of stigma that could cause me to lose my job, i job i worked hard to land and among other repercussions. These are reasonable fears. My work with Kelechi Ubozoh brings forth another desire. Also, the other contributors to this book are helping me take the stand because the slogan nothing about us without us is vital and is a major strength of this book. Every story rsa comes from someone with lived experience and denying all the complexities of mine in the hopes of protecting my file self from the structure we are resisting would be counter the ambitions of this project. I believe my diagnosis of bipolar disorder is really a complex response to Early Childhood traumas compounded by psychiatric traumas and other violence i experience later in life much of which can be viewed through the lens of structural oppression but i have many tools. Medication is one. Mutual aid, therapy, creativity, spirituality of the biggest tool for me is radical acceptance and i might have hard days still. I give myself the permission to be out and proud as a survivor, advocate, neuro atypical artist so let me see here, because of trauma and perhaps somepredisposition to intense mood states , i am narrow atypical. Because i am narrow atypical i have dangerous gifts. Because i have dangerous gifts, i have mad pride, that heels on me type heal the ragged edges while icall on myself to be a force for change. [applause] thank you. Thank you so much. Im not leaving until i introduce kelechi. All right, Kelechi Ubozoh, my amazing coeditor is a nationally recognized Nigerian American writer featured in the f word documentary and the oprah magazine. Her first book voices from radical Mental Health is now released from north atlantic books and Penguin Random house today. [applause] thank you. Thank you everyone, oh my goodness. So many people since the last time i was appear. No worries, its all good. Im going to read a poem and we are going to break for our panel. I will have five minutes for you to stretch and do the selfcare thing. This is called fuel crazy. She wasnt crazy, but the world had a way of making her feel so. You try being a black goth girl in Stone Mountain georgia. She liked vampires and morrissey and held the darkness wrapped around her like a warm familiar blanket. She always was too sensitive and too reactive, held everything at high voltage. She wasnt crazy but she said whatever the thought she wanted, spelled words from lips like red wine on carpet. She left manystains. They called her crazy k and it stuck. She called a fire escape to hang off the edge, looking down she flirted with that. She wanted to know if she let go which he be free . She imagine a place where all people loved her. She wasnt crazy but went to grandma the ultimate matriarch who kissed her eyeliner face and marveled at her choice of combat boots, when grandma died the darkness woke up and started choking her. She wanted to stop the world and get off because when your world ends but youre still alive, theres something crazy about that. She was 13 when she wrote the first suicide note. She wasnt crazy but succinct as far. She wasnt crazy,just honest. She didnt want to live. She got messy and a friend found the note, called her mom. All her mom could say is why baby , the words left her. What she crazy . But she didnt feel crazy. They stripped her down like an animal, took her shoelaces and put her on suicide watch. She felt crazy then. A psych ward for kids smelled like every hospital, bleach with the stench of death and disappointment, even in this place there was a psych ward hierarchy. They separated the kids with the eating disorder from the crazy kid, the frail looking teens never made eye contact with the other kids got it. A dreamed of mcdonalds french fries and getting out of it, lifesize purgatory buttons. One day, little christine tried to open the locked door but it wouldnt budge. The Security Guard said we lock it to keep the crazy people out. Cecile laugh uncontrollably but in hindsight she could see that he was right. Because when she left that psych ward, she created a papiermcchc mass of glitter and art and she smiled until her eyes bugged out. She stopped wearing liquid eyeliner and made everyone feel comfortable. She said all the right things and she lied about the darkness. See, all better now. The moment she stopped telling the truth, that was the moment she wished she were crazy. I just want to remind everyone im casey gardner, i read first and i want to also introduce all of our contributors and our editors are going to be participating in the panel tonight, im going to be moderating so everyones going to go down and introduce themselves. Hi everyone, Kelechi Ubozoh. Ld green. All right, wonderful so im going to go ahead and ask the question to our group here. My first question that i wanted to ask everyone is just generally, who is this book for western mark. This book is for those of lived experience, those who have suffered from the Mental Health system. Allies, family, loved ones, Mental Health workers and possibly some activists. I would say this book is for anyone who has been touched by Mental Health or is curious about Mental Health and wants to know more. Osha workers, teachers. I dont think theres anyone thats not for because Mental Health is everyones life so its kind of like everyonebut really everyone. Still moving on. My other question is what is the biomedical model of Mental Health illness and why is it problematic. Ive got so much to say about the biomedical modelbut ill keep concise. So i think one of the ways and i understand the medical model and ive learned so much doctor deboer mate who does a lot of work around,. Any thoughts about problems, well lots of problems which is interesting but another one, the medical model the mind from the body. So were looking at the mind and isolation from the body often and then second, it separates the person from the environment area all these locating our distress as some kind of faulty wiring. Theyalways come up with a new theory as to why and how our wiring is faulty. And its an individualist focus and i think thats one of the most destructive things about it is its always looking at disease. Individual, we talk about people as burdens. Publichealth language,the global burden of disease. Though i really believe and actively smashing this model down. We are biology, were human beings but we are primarily influenced by our environment and the medical models does not do that justice. We need to politicize our Mental Health and revolutionized the way that we understand it. [applause] ditto. Basically i echo everything antoniosaid. I think most of, theres research, motto is one of them shows Mental Health issues more often than not are because of trauma and most often than not that trauma has political roots and that is its institutional and it isinterpersonal. So i think the biomedical model places, its a politicize is that trauma so i think we need to politicize Mental Health and i think that the focus of socalled treatment is on psychiatric medication instead of fixing the ring and i think the conversation of Mental Health needs to take more in terms of what i think is these grassroots formations talking about Restorative Justice, accountability in families with trauma and family and i think thats where Mental Health needs to lag in the next generation of those folks doing that work is doing more communitybased social justice and Restorative Justice and thats where healing hasto come from and not just brain chemicals. I spoke to okay, cool. I spoke to in my essay that i read, we will talk about but for example me personally i experienced childhood trauma which led to anxiety and depression and challenges that were labeled as bipolar disorder that led to treatment at a young age that was in itself traumatizing and i was given a message at 19 that i would never recover from this condition and that its so incredibly damaging and more than suspect when my brain hasnt even finished developing at 19 oh the recovery model in contrast to the biomedical model offers hope instead of a lifetime of dependency on traumatizing stick systems and treatment methods so rather than a onesizefitsall diagnostic model, the recovery model asks each individual what each wellness looks like for them and help that person achieveit and its important to know what health and wellness is not a solitary activity. Communities dont help individuals thrive because we are social animals, communities made up of individuals drive or struggle together so we are not individually ill, we strive to be well together. Had because i think yes to all of that. [applause] ill add a quick little snippet. Wheni first went to california , i attended a year run conference with the Mental Health cessation of San Francisco talking about the harms of biomedical model and one of the examples they gave was there are a bunch of clinicians, clinical researchers working with these nomadic tribes. They travel all over and when they first met them a met a gentleman who heard voices and saw things so he had hallucinations and the Community Felt that he had spiritual gifts, he was part of our community, thats great butthe clinician said this young man as schizophrenia, hes sick, hes ill so he needs treatment. They did have a very different way of looking at things and when they left their life okay, you need treatment. A come back, maybe seven or eight months later and they said where did he go and they said were a nomadic tribe, we traveled and he told him he said anyone sick, that is horrifying. They quit this westernized model on something that didnt need anything. He was accepted by his community, thought of as having gets and now hes left to die and while that is an intense example i think its something to think about when you try to put Something Like that on different cultures. Youre not thinking about race, youre not thinking about eventuality, not thinking about the culture thats like the recovery model is so important that we have to look at the whole person and what their needs are as opposed to prescribing something for people so thats just an unfortunate example. I think thats a great segueinto our next question. So the next question i have for you all is in what way is Mental Illness a social justice issue. When i think about this, i think about one really clear example. And its connected to the side. And there are actually policies that are reducing the suicide rate by pursuing equity injustice so the example allowing give is Marriage Equality. There was a study that showed that in state, this is before it had been nationally past, in states where Marriage Equality laws and in past, there was a decrease in suicide among lgbt q youth. So that is a perfect example to me about how Mental Health is a social justice issue and that if we actually try to improve conditions and to increase belonging and acceptance, connectedness, all the thing and have kept us alive for all of our existence as humans, if we foster those policy we might see a great improvement in Mental Health and reduction in suicide and other tragedies that we would assign in our country. I have a very long written essay. Im going to read it. I think that Mental Health issues are social justice issues on two fronts. The first front is that the existence of what some folks call a mad movement or radical Mental Health movement is of a political and cultural movements to the bias of madcommunities. This movement localizes its own cut agendas related to the knowledge of mad self and mad communities. I would also take a moment as the mad movement is composed of diverse communities, women and lgbt q communities. These rural issues are related to social justice issues and the mad movement is related to other contemporary social Justice Movements such as black lives matter , and the Liberation Movement against global capitalism and western imperial colonization. This coalition works in alliance with political principles but i think this is also already constructed on political platforms as many communities in the mad movement are involved in these movements. For example i am here on this panel as a mad advocate but i am also involved in Economic Justice organizing for housing in my hometown with other people of color as well as organizing events for transit justice with other nonconforming folks. Mental Health Issues are social justice issues and what i hear and learn from all of these contemporary total Justice Movements is that Mental Health and selfcare or Community Care is a critical component of accountability and transformation on personal and political levels. Caring for myself is not selfindulgent, it is selfpreservation and that in itself is an act of political warfare. When i redefined the spaces that address racial equity, lgbtqi rights, all of these communities are talking about taking care of oneself and ones community. That is both personal and political, to heal oneself and ones community for personal and political challenge. I also have a written answer. There are many ways in which Mental Health issues intersect with other forms of oppression. Trauma is not always the result of political oppression but it often is and Mental Health is impacted by homophobia and transfer via or micro aggressions to macro aggressions and violence. Speaking personally my anxiety and mood challenges have been with me a long time as a survivor of childhood trauma and when that is compounded with micro aggressions against me as a queer and gender queer person , thank you. [applause] i think you beautifully covered it. To have a Mental Health issue, youre actually able to be discriminated against, like legally for years. I have lost my job personally and 30 more so im not really up there. I lost my job by disclosing i had a mental and Health Issues so what were saying is its not something that happened years ago, be bad treatment and hospital, a lot of otherthings but these are issues that are still happening today. So i just want to leave it there that its not something thats in our history books. [applause] i wanted to thank you for bringing up that the personal is political becausei think thats so relevant and important. I wanted to ask next, we talk a lot about how narrative is really important in kind of reclaiming our stories and making us feel like our experiences are our own and i wanted to ask all of you how this book or your own experiences in reclaiming your narratives may have helped you in that sense. Human beings are always meaning making creatures, where telling stories to ourselves, to each other and i was told a damaging story that was echoed by many other folks both tonight and in the book that you have chronic, severe, i think i had for diagnosis by the time i was 18. You have all these diagnosis. I was told you guys have to spend the rest of your life in a care facility. Im still getting rid of in my body and in my spirit that process help me optimize that poison into medicine. And im so grateful for the opportunity to be able to work with other people who do the same and to create more space for us to speak the truth and to talk back to the lies that weve been told. [applause] ive been writing a long time and narrative is healing and has been for me. I like the idea of the heroes journey as one way of writing can be power and that works well in hollywood, and the superhero stories the hollywood doesnt do very well when they come up with Mental Health there is. I feel like for me hollywood is already like you exhibit symptoms. You got help from a professional. You got on the right modification. Medication. You swallow to pride along with the field. Dont expect too much of yourself, which is damaging, so the untold story is the harm done by the story, the system itself. Even the medication is part of these the public me, its a tool. Therapist can disappoint, too. I think whats important to remember is having a rigid social network, community are vital important when coming to what is the counter narrative. What weve been given and what we are told, like taken medication can swallow your bill, swallow your pride, what can counter notice be. Thats what im trying to discover as i was writing for the book, and thats photo id showcase in the sense, like these oppositional stories, stories count. Thats why we put so much emphasis on personal narrative like the first twothirds of the book are never did anything people to listen to these stories and having others read and witnessing of stories is still feeling so thanks for being here tonight from witnessing, and just again to echo what romana with saint earlier, i had a performance artist, teacher in college i think i will get a tattoo to me because it said three times, she said the most the most personal is the most universal which i really love. I feel like with that probability of specificity that we have in this book we are humanized and thats what most important things were doing with this book. Thank you. [applause] just from the stories have always been part of my life growing up. My mom would tell me stories when i was young. I was also a reporter for a short period of time, print journalism, that was a choice. Didnt work out so well, the internet. But i really loved talking to people and hearing their stories and immersed myself in the world. I loved how things, words which is poor for out of them. And meanwhile, i wasnt really telling my story. I wasnt telling the truth. I pretended to be happy all the time when i wasnt. When i first started telling my story and having people accept it which was shocking, im not too much, im not too dark or scary. Folks like okay, and also, we knew. Thats the other thing. I think that was a really, really healing process for me. So for the book and guess a lot of it is noted, a lot of his research and all of these folks for the most part of lived expense of Mental Health issues. Youve got researchers, you can also folks who are poets and everyone has this diverse take on things and we dont all agree. Agree. Thats what i think is important. You readable, we dont all agree with each other. We can agree people at the right of voices but we dont agree with what it will look like and i think thats the really big important thing. Theres not a one size fits all. A lot of the Mental Health work and what is the answer . The answer is individual. Its community but also individual. We cant prescribe it to someone else. Whatever youre doing is not right if youre not involved. Which is why we have this platform, the stage, all of the space you all a witness tonight which were so grateful, it its because it is that individual place reclaiming that, is part of the evening. So thank you all so much for being here and listening to that. [applause] once again, you let perfectly into the next question, if not answered it outright. My next question is specific regarding stigma, and i think as contributors to this book we all inhabit a marginalized community, if not many intersections of other marginalized communities. What i i wanted to ask all of , finally, is how do you think we overcome stigma and specifically marginalized communities, for example, where trends and communities of color . And what do you think the changes are that need to happen in the Health System in order to overcome the stigma or in order to create justice for these communities . I could read something that really it is the inclusion of communities. I think a lot of communities get a token space at the table where they are not decisionmakers but have a lot of responsibility that note authority to make a decision. As long as we are excluded, then we have a challenge. The other thing is our data. Its like not the sexiest thing to talk about, but if the data is not focused on these marginalized communities, and all the interventions go to one type of person, and then you dont have these really transfer of the interventions that will be held, the we community to find. That becomes a challenge. A lot of them have the answers. Were just not including the. Difficult, its hard, its political. Whatever the excuse is theres always an excuse. Theres money worth fighting over. This person has more. This nonprofit doesnt get along with that. We need to shut that down. As opposed to excluding them and utilizing them when you need a new funding source. Like, really transforming the system requires people youre trying to help, they need to be leading and have decisionmaking authority, i think. What i was going to say is, like i think to build on what you are saying, the last question like listening to the individuals need for whatever their Mental Health is, i think thats the same thing as far as marginalized communities because each individual within a marginalized community has an individual story that needs to be heard and you cant have a one size fits all for like people within marginalized communities. Listening to diverse voices, listen to people rings meaningful change, also think trans and training by the population of the therapists. I think its important to remember dsmiii include homosexuality and it was removed in the 1970s which really isnt that long ago. Lots of people in this country still apologized and demonize quicker and trans identity. Conversion therapy still a terrible reality. Dsm5 still has gender disorder because the diagnosis to make insurance pay for gender reforming surgeries. However, it pays for the surgeries. We do have to apologist and stigmatized transgender gender to get surgery paid for. I think this is, i think this is, all these questions can be so complex. I think i have various levels to answer this question. One of them is the example kelechi gave about the tribe in africa. I think that statement is like a colonial concept because i think in various cultures that are people who had what was called perceived a spiritual gifts. Some of us have that cousin for some of who sees things before, who sees things before they happen or that premonitions. I think philosophically we need to get more in touch with our roots and sort of get in touch with her own spirituality if your spiritual. I think thats a a cultural sht that needs to happen. I think that we do need more therapists and educators and specialists from the community that are mostly being served with Mental Health services which are communities of color, women of color. And i think those folks serve both as cultural ambassadors and as Mental Health specialist. And i think what we can talk about here is the biomedical model theres a whole culture. It takes a lot working with the family or persons that have never been exposed to Mental Health, the biomedical model if you will, and the whole learning curve to all that stuff, psychiatry and i many of this year, as a social worker tell you theres people to have been exposed to Mental Health or dont know what that is. These people are both insiders and outsiders were both Mental Health workers and cultural ambassadors, we need to hire those folks. The other thing kelechi is speaking to is we need to pay those folks for their work. Oftentimes the clinicians are paid more than the pure specialist in the peer special is doing exact same kind of work in the clinician is getting almost 30,000 more than the peer specialist. The last thing i will say is that i will say, however, as a person of color, as a transgender, as a migrant worker, as much as thats the ideal, unfortunate, i hate to be the majority of people who go to the grad school will become social workers, they will tend to be white people, they will tend to still be straight people. So i think the Mental Health system needs to get marginalized communities and authoritative position to train to be at grad schools, to trained use mostly white straight male folks will be social workers and clinicians. They need to get trained, too. Because to be honest they will be the ones doing the research [inaudible] thank you. [applause] and i just wanted to add something quickly. Im sure you all are aware the vast majority of folks who were killed, people of color who get killed by police when some kind of a Mental Health crisis or at some kind of a Mental Health issue. One concrete thing i think, White Supremacy is stigmatizing. All the forms of oppression are stigmatizing and they contribute to mental stress. And so one thing that ive been really pushing for is to remove Law Enforcement from responding to any kennametal health crisis, period, ever. [applause] people sick cant be done but when he division it and work towards us together is really cool app i encourage all to check out called concern that operates in the tenderloin district of San Francisco and its about trained during folks respond to crisis without involving any Law Enforcement. So it can be done, blood to keep working on this with all of you. So wanted to add that. I just want to say thank you to all of our panel participants. I i specifically wanted to say thank you to kelechi for putting this book together because dean chance to do that when i was up there. So please give them a quick round of applause. [applause] ive been getting emails for the last three years. They have been doing this for three years. Given back to you now. So that was the panel. We were not transition into book signing and something else, q a. Does it would have questions they do. Theres a a mic someone will ce around. No pressure. Im going to ask a fairly provocative question from the panelists. Shes going to ask what they will ask a fairly provocative question. This might just be connected to cspan so you cannot hear anything but we will repeat your question. So basically what is suicide a problem . What is suicide considered, in light of Mental Illness, psychiatric disease, rather than being purely a a philosophical issue, personal issue . Something which the medical establishment should have no basis whatsoever delving into. So i dont know how to restate that can but why suicide a problem, and why is a medical establishment involved in it if it personal and philosophical issue. Okay. So i will only speak from my opinion and briefly, that i can tell you i think suicide is a problem for me, i cant speak on behalf of a whole bunch of other people. All i do know is the rates are climbing. People are not doing any better than they were. For me it was isolation and having a really negative thoughts and thinking that was the only option that i had. Also being told i was broken and a lot of other things. So it was very complex trauma. Really complicated. I couldnt boil it down to one thing. I wish i could because then i could say thats what it was, and thats how you solve it. Its a little complicated from my point of view, but i can hand it over to someone who has other thoughts about that. I want to add, Suicide Prevention is a very fraught with all the reasons, what we talked about with the medical model and coercive responses to distress and dehumanizing responses. And i can only speak from personal experience. I was suicidal for lots of reasons but a big part of it was because of like this was not a world that was built for me. I didnt think that i any possibility of belonging or connection or anything that anybody else had. And it wasnt until i had the opportunities to find those things that it shifted. I still have suicidal thoughts, and i dont have a problem with that. Ive learned now to live with them. But i know so much of the recent i personally was suicidal had to do with a lot of dehumanizing necessities in society. I think we can take a libertarian approach. I personally dont. I dont believe in harming people to save their lives, but it think we should do everything we can to try create a world where more people feel like it was built for them. [applause] any of the questions from the audience . We will start asking you questions. Just kidding. Im not going to do that. Ive asked you a bunch of questions already. So why do wanted to ask, specifically both of you but maybe both of you as well, from either reading or putting together this book and hearing or reading all of these works that came from folks come to feel like youve learned anything looking to any sort of aha moment about this work and the narrative related to it . The question was from putting this book together and all of the narrative and the work you become to any aha moment or learning from that . I mean, this sounds like a copout answer but everything that was set on the panel, things, like i went into it knowing come having a certain worldview and having certain perspective around, like ive been involved with projects and written essays about Mental Health and ive had my own worldview, a thin collaborating with kelechi come having so many summer sessions where she was coming from in a different place in the same realm, like i cant, its impossible for me to, like, i learned so much. Like i said over three years and hope its evident in the work itself. I learned that even though this is a book that is challenging the bio medical model, a lot of us dont agree and i think theres beauty in not agree and still being advocates and a lot of world where im not radical enough, or an too radical and it dont fit anywhere. This book is a place where i sit, because im just being truthful what is my truth in my experience, and i think the contributors really taught me so much about research, about their own personal stories, about how they would be healing. I just have not ever thought about some of these concepts i thought i knew, and hearing from peoples personal experiences, it really changed the way i thought about things. So yes, so much but also we can still be advocates and not all have the same cookiecutter response to things. In the vein of what you all were saying about disagreeing, i dont necessarily agree with this. I dont know how i feel about it, but it was interesting to me when i think not interested in opposing the diagnosis of gender identity disorder and transgender, because she felt that we shouldnt be, we shouldnt take a diagnosis [inaudible] diagnosis shouldnt be a bad thing. Thats while to me because i think as much as we talk about diagnoses not been stigma, i didnt even question the [inaudible] i think some people, because way people think, but i just thought that was interesting. I understand that. You want to restate that . Basically, who was the name of the author . [inaudible] i dont know. So there was an author who had this idea that gender identity disorder is an unacceptable diagnosis because were trying to get rid of stigma for diagnosis and so just i get jen i didnt disorder and im okay with that, just like id ocd and im okay with that. So lets get rid of stigma, the second of what thats what im gathering. [inaudible] i think [inaudible] im not very specialize in medical transition or anything like that. A whole nother field, but i think what im hearing from your question is more like a process answer, was i think what weve been talking about here, individual, society at large ways of doing things. I dont know if this relates to your question, but like i think something that ensure the contributors could understand a little different, i think like when to get diagnosed, when a person gets diagnosis something, it comes with the whole infrastructure that our services are tied to the diagnosis. So when a a person gets a diagnosis, then they are offered all of these services which a book is talk that is not always the most Humane Services the sometimes people are really in need of services. Its an interesting question about what a diagnosis does for someone, right . Because, yeah, i think [inaudible] but its sad because that places people in a very precarious situation where you either reject, you dont want to involve yourself in a system and get diagnosed and not get services, or you do involve yourself in the system and get what you need. Even if those services are not that good or that great anyway so doesnt that [inaudible] thats my we have time for one or two more questions. Ill try to project. Thank you guys for sharing. Thank you guys for caring. My question to you guys, someone mentioned in a quote selfcare equals selfpreservation. So what do you guys do, like personally, and you guys have been in it for longer than the three years to publish the work. Im curious to know is a lifetime, right . What do you guys do to do you and put you first . The question is what do we do for selfcare and selfpreservation. A big form of my selfcare is art and activism. Ill be honest. The other things rotate, like taking a walk in nature and sitting down and beginning to meditate and things like that. But truly it is art and activism, doing collective work with people. I think selfcare to two important i also believe it collective care and thats a lot of what we are missing. , appear right now is important expensing this question in a way [inaudible] we all have the lived experience and we are all practitioners or involved in it. I have to answer this question correctly. I think that speaks to what this moment is about. [inaudible] right. I tried to have a good answer, what in getting at, in order for me to be a person thats balanced and healed, i do feel i have to good answer to the question, which is appropriate for lifetime therapy. Anyway, what i [laughing] ive been sober for five years so i go to aa meetings, thank you. [applause] i have a sponsor. I try to go to other meetings. Ive been meditating for the last six months which is been an amazing it totally changed my life. I connect with my higher power, i pray, i honor my ancestors. I write. I engage in activism. Im in a loving relationship with my partner. I think that mindfulness, being gentle with myself, i try to gravitate towards tried to involve those principles. Thats what i do. Cool. I am also in the 12 step community. Ive been sober for actually it will be a year in august. [applause] thank you. My birthday. Also another 12step committee, i talked about indie book like mutual aid being a big source of my selfcare just like having tightknit close friendships and people to talk to whether theyre from 12step or from other circles. Just like, you know, not always, just like having tight friendships. And then my partner as well. I also walk in nature, too, and right. And i should do yoga but i dont. [laughing] i have cats that are huge part of my healthcare. Not afraid to admit it. [applause] so learning yoga was really great for me. [laughing] these are kind of strange selfcare things but [inaudible] saying no, developing boundary, removing toxic people for my life. And then theres the fun stuff the fun stuff is more like i do karaoke aggressively. I embrace the golf inside. Got. I have amazing deep friendships with loving people who i showed up with panama in what else. Im just me. Im all of the mess and all of beauty. Im not trying to pretend. You get what you see. [applause] and i think that might be it for our time before we move into signing things. I want to first thank all the contributors, thank you all for being here. [applause] stick around, buy a book. Get to know people, and thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] you are watching booktv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Booktv, television for serious readers