Readers of the book and then followed by a panel discussion. There will be q a and all the amazing stuff after words. I wanted to give you a big round of applause because in fact we are opening up a new location come august 1 and we would love to see you there. Just a few housekeeping notes for tonight. There will be an audience q a after the panel discussion, plus a chance to have book signing. There will be books here in miami. The q a portion it is a collection of 25 essays and poems written by and for people with experiences of the Mental Health care system in america. From the matter Pride Movement to foreign care. It is dedicated to finding working alternatives to the Mental HealthIndustrial Complex. Often unexpected ways and places to friendship, respect and the truth of the expense. Without further ado, i want to bring up to a panelist. [applause] hi everyone. Its so good to see you. I am one of the coeditors of we have been to patient. So excited that you are here on a tuesday night to have a real conversation about Mental Health and hear all of these Amazing Stories and have a great conversation. Hi im the coeditor, i am tran11 and we are just great for for hosting this in arranging this. I hope you enjoy the testimony of these voices and thank you for being here. Ill se[applause] first up, we have casey gardner, he is a queer poet and educator who writes both to heal and critique the identity and culture. She teaches with poetry and digital storytellers and has been on three national poetry. She is currently pursuing her masters in english education at ucsc, i think surety has her masters. Welcome to the stage,. [applause] im going to say, this poem is a little old so bear with me. Its an older thing about myself. Is called occupational therapy. One year ago, i was in the hospital. I asked myself what was doing here recites keeping myself safe on the pill bottle next to my bed, i cannot sleep in that place. They checked on us every 15 minutes, yelled in the hallway and sometimes i still smell the formaldehyde from the boy get in i think my supposed to be there now. Is 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 i am supposed to start seeing my future inside. Three months until i move away, three minutes to read this poem, is any enough. Lately i have heard everyone say the same thing. Our is not therapy. I introduce you to poetry, to art because they wanted you to get better. I started doing poetry because they wanted to get better but did i get better . I had a panic attack before writing this. I did not eat or sleep enough this week. All things the therapist told me too focus on our promise, i promised i would not fall in love with anything that was not myself, now im so in love with you. I cannot eat or sleep even though eating and sleeping means my anxiety stays quiet. I came back from the hospital. Justintime to jump back into my art like a bottle of pills. If we see the scars on my wrist have not healed over. If you see how afraid i am of going back. I believe i am still a singleserving cello cup. A morning pill regime. Part of me is still in a room full of people reading a poem. I know this is the only way i can heal. But if i see the therapist again i would tell her this, i got into graduate school yesterday. I spent three months in my apartment investing in my future, a year ago i did not think i had a future. I could not go on public without hearing all of the voices of my demons imposed all my friends. I make progress, i fix my bicycle, started eating fruit, stop talking to people who wanted to swallow me when my anxiety creeps into my nightmares, and change. Everyone thanks i am still a little crazy. I am so different. Like yesterday. You kissed me and i told myself, my health is more important in the spring last night, i was supposed to read a poem, memorize it, make it ready for a stage but instead i made cupcakes, i played music and im here writing about it now because that is more important than any applause this page has held me in its arm saying did you brighten yourself today. That is more important than being the best writer or artist, i am my best self. And i am better than it was yesterday. We are all better than we were yesterday and isnt that in the most important thing, isnt that the best poem ive ever written. [applause] [cheering] thank you. Thank you casey. Now please welcome to the stage the writer ramona rio, she writes in the book. [applause] infiltrating the Mental HealthIndustrial Complex. The patient professional paradox, the Mental HealthIndustrial Complex functions on a division tween Mental Health professionals on the one hand, and Mental Health patients 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 psychiatric diagnosis or suffer from Mental Health problems. Mental Health Professionals are psychologically stable whereas Mental Health patients are unstable. Patients and professionals are supposedly two distinct types of people. This division separating patients from professionals is rooted in hierarchies based on class, race and ability. Supposedly, a person cannot be a patient in a professional at the same time or in the same space, but both indemnities and experiences. On the one hand, i earned a bachelors degree in psychology and a masters in social work or msw and have worked as a Mental Health therapist for over 40 years. On the other hand, i have gone through Substance Abuse treatment four times, from early adolescence into early adulthood. Shortly after obtaining my msw experience a drug induced Mental Health crisis during which i was beaten and tasered by the police and psychiatrically hospitalized against my will. Schizo affective disorder is prescribed as my diagnosis. I regularly see a psychiatrist and therapist and ive been taking psychiatric medication ever since my Mental Health crisis. I identify myself as a social worker and a therapist. Notwithstanding this, i also self identify with the history of the mad movement. In the antipsychiatry movement. Myself i did fight as nero typical, a mat activist, a psychiatric survivor and a survivor of Police Brutality in the Mental HealthIndustrial Complex. This brings me too name, this brings me too what i would like to name as a patient professional. The Mental HealthIndustrial Complex stipulates that those were Mental Health professionals are psychologically stable and those who are patients are psychologically on stable, then my existence as a patient professional is a paradox. To be a patient professional is to inhabit a body, mind, 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 the legitimate resistance of cognates of when i interact who reject the idea of mentally ill. Navigating this division between the patient and the professional is a task that i find that requires instinctive compulsivity, creativity and nuance. [applause] next up is jesse, he is a writer and activist working at the intersection of storytelling, Mental Health and social justice. She is codirector of the institute for the development of human art advocate to support growth and change in the Mental Health system. She has a degree in psychology and nyu in her degree is in writing. [applause] hi. I also want to think the editors so much for putting this together. Its my fellow contributors. I get a little nervous at public speaking but i want sam dedicating this to my sister right wish to be here tonight, this is inspired by her. Also im reading my piece of the book. At the heart of this is a simple idea. One of the ways we can implement the recovery model is through narrative. The narrative model supports participants to reclaim overwhelming and complex situations and supports them to rewrite damaging stories constructing better alternative. The type of narrative inquiry runs a new model for navigating health. The mode of thinking and talking about Mental Health considers a unique story of individuals. And fosters a purpose for their participation in the system but historically not supported in excluded them. The translating experience into a written on validate that happens. It assigns meaning to inexperience and makes it possible for a person to view a painful experience from a distance. The discrepancy provides strategy for the future problemsolving of a person heightening the potential for growth. Writing is a practice, it provides control and delivers a sense of satisfaction that little else can. At the end of the day, i best understood when its told as a story. Dismissing the power of personal narrative, and essential voice in the conversation about Mental Health. The voices of those of the experience. Mental health is too obscure, too delicate, too intertwined with experience to be designed a medical story or worse, to ignore the presence of story altogether. The editors and contributors firmly believe that Mental Health research and practice stand to be improved by improving the voices of mental difference. A book such as this eliminate the experience of Mental Health, to readers who would not have otherwise understand. The reading experience allows the audience to bear witness to her stories which has the potential to foster infancy and reaches stigma. Holly hill is implicit with the unique story of our life. [applause] so much. Next up he is cofounder of the project the network of pure base Mental Health support groups and media project. He is a masters in social work and worked as a recovery specialist for practice innovation. Is currently the training director for the institute of the development of human art. [applause] heres the deal, i have three minutes and i have a long essay that it will not reach you. I will tell you all read the first paragraph and tell you about about the context. So the context is this, three years ago right now i was finishing my masters in social work at hunter. I spent 12 years of my life working on this thing workin ths project. It is a network appear base Mental Health support groups and we started it because we were trained to change the language and culture of what is Mental Health and Mental Illness. I went back to school because i saw that the Mental Health system needs to change and people need to be on the inside. But i also went back to school because i was looking for mentorship and looking for more guidelines and trying to understand what it meant. So this thing that he wrote is called underground transmissions and centering the marginalized. Collaborative strategies for revisioning the public Mental Health system. It was a 58 page paper that i wrote about working at the parachute project. I was on a mobile Treatment Team and everyone on the team was trained and open dialogue which is a Family Therapy model. We were working with young people that i diagnosed with psychotic disorders. The thing about the team, everyone, half the people on the team were clinicians and happy people on the team were people who repair specialist. They were people who had been diagnosed with a Mental Illness themselves and were working in the system and had a different perspective than the clinicians. I was a clinical intern on the team and when i got there, i was thinking in my clinician, pure, whats going on. And then i got interested in the working relationships between peers and clinicians. That is the context. Let me redo the first prograf. Its academic writing, its not the most elaborating. [laughter] it is kinda lawfully. At a diagnosis b of bipolar disorder prayed. [laughter] the purpose of this paper is to lay the intellectual foundation for the development of a new generation of Mental Health support services. These services will both model, cooperation between clinicians in the growing specialist workforce and the public Mental Health system and actively encourage the perforation of a vibrant, independent. Led movement has the power to creatively influence the current culture of Mental Health services. That is quite a sentence. This movement would express the employment both within and outside of the public healt menl Health System with Core Principles based on selfdetermination and social justice. As to rac dan race someplace. Her publications include warrior, the Huffington Post and truth out. Its also featured in an awardwinning documentary. Learn more thank you so much. Welcome. Do echo gratitude for making all of this possible. I am about to read a poem which really was the beginning of the taking my power back. On that proud glorious day you graduated from medical school, you took an oath as old as socrates. Above all, do no harm. Above all, do no harm. Above all, do no harm, no harm. But the trouble is you thought you were doing good by warehousing us into sterile and hospitable place you called the hospital. You practiced the highest form of tough love there is. So tough i couldnt see him anywhere. You place the blame squarely on our serotonin flowed labeling us with whatever diagnosis on whatever page of your book you found appropriate at the time. You thought you could turn us around, make us into future citizens, make us fit into this a just militaristic homophobic, trans phobic i could keep going Generation Society you always insisted they were the problem if you were the solution, but your treatments, your directives issued on high didnt he know our brains were open our heart they merely transformed these organs into rage. If anything, you taught me how to act, you taught me all the world is a stage and pushed me to awardwinning performances, the authority and life away from your end of her kind eyes. Via wireless freedom or a glimmer. Perhaps i give you too much credit assuming that you saw us as something more than double hours, business as usual until the money ran out this time. Dear doctor, you will never know in your ivory tower on the second floor how many years i spent sweating and struggling to undo all the harm you did with the best of intentions. I declare war building a new chart with a course of humanity and all the while the bones are twitching in their graves. [applause] [cheering] next we have my amazing coeditor, a gender preferred writer and contradicted to many other venues. Writing poetry, nonfiction, speculative fiction and is a literary fellow. An english professor welcome my coeditor and friend. [applause] thank you all so much to being here and the contributors. I am proud to be in the chorus of voices with you and that is kind of the theme i wan a themee with you tonight is my bipartisan introduction segmented held in the part that i wrote. As i write my part of the introduction all of our contributors and publisher of thought into being i must admit i am filled with excitement and trepidation. I want to claim my seat at the table and by doing that, i am compelled to disclose that i also am a Mental Health consumer, psychiatric survivor, lifelong patient, Mental Health advocates. Theyve been insufficient as best as a psychiatric survivor im healing from the trauma inflicted on m me baby industril complex as a lifelong patient, i have many stories to tell about psychiatry and eve even their limitations. To say that im now a Mental Health advocate and not just a survivor of the patient can uber fields i must admit there is another reason i would like to close my title used experience. Double of my everyday distress can be labeled as depression or anxiety but i feel compelled to moore to speak up our of what ive suffered and to honor the strengths of my condition. My reluctance to assert my pride stems from the power structure such the very thing this book resists namely the repercussions of stigma that could cause me to lose my job i worked hard to land the other contributors to the book are helping me take this stand because the slogan a thing about us is a major strength of the book. Every story or essay comes from somebody lived experiences and denying the complexities of mine in the hopes of protecting the structure wstructure your resisd be countering the conditions of the project. I believe that my diagnosis of bipolar disorder is a complex response to Early Childhood trauma compounded by psychiatric trauma and other violence ive experienced later in life which can be viewe viewed through thes of structural oppression. But i have many tools, medication is one of them, mutual aid, becom, v. , creativi, spirituality. The biggest tool for me as radical acceptance but i