Madness Radio

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 insight made a huge cultural impact worl...

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 whose w...

How can seeing visions and hearing voices be transformed into a spiritual gift for healing? What does the initiation ordeal into becoming a shaman involve? Gogo Ekhaya Esima was diagnosed with psychosis and confined in psychiatric hospitals before she became an initiated Sangoma healer in the Zulu tradition of South Africa. Today she is a certified Peer Recovery Specialist in mental health, a trau...

What is it like to hear voices — and are all voices harmful or can they also be helpers? What does voice hearing say about the human mind – and the society we live in? And how can we support people who hear voices? Lisa Forestell has heard voices since she was a child. She is an organizer with the Hearing Voices Movement and with the Western Massachusetts Learning Community, a mutual s...

Is mindfulness meditation about calming the mind and accepting things as they are? Or is it a force for social change and challenging oppression? Can meditation help us become intimate with our wild, primal and untamed creative force? Nirali Shah, certified UCLA mindfulness facilitator and teacher at Spirit Rock, has spent thousands of hours meditating, as well as serving in one of the largest slu...

Now available as an audiobook!    Based in more than 10 years work in the peer support movement,The Icarus Project and Freedom Center’s 52-page guide is used internationally by individuals, families, professionals, and organizations to support reducing and coming off psychiatric drugs. Includes info on mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, risks, benefits,...

What is it like to flee a war-torn country as a child? What lasting psychological effects do refugees face? Can peer support and trauma informed care lead to lasting recovery? Khatera Aslami Tamplen, an Afghan-American and the Consumer Empowerment Manager for Alameda CountyBehavioral Health Services in California discusses war trauma, the activist struggle to end involuntary commitment, and the va...

Are psychiatric treatments, experts, and medications the best way for traumatized communities to heal their mental health problems? Could indigenous practices, including traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture, offer a different way forward — through grassroots community development? Herman Garcia is the Vice President and Ryan Bemis Founder of Crossroads Community Supported Healthcare,...

Are beliefs in witchcraft and “voodoo death” not real? Do magical explanations of disease mean people are primitive and less educated? Or are stories and beliefs at the heart of reality for all cultures – including yours? Frank Bures, author of  The Geography of Madness: Penis Thieves, Voodoo Death, and the Search for the Meaning of the World’s Strangest Syndromes , looks b...

How does the legacy of colonialism affect mental health in India? Are women’s rights, spiritual freedom, and ant-colonialism intertwined? Do women who choose a path of spiritual renunciation have the same freedom as men? Where are human rights more respected: in traditional temples, or in hospital locked wards? Bhargavi Davar’s mother Bapu was a psychiatric abuse survivor persecuted fo...

What if psychotic experiences express historical and intergenerational trauma? Does one person’s emotional crisis reach beyond their own individual mind? Could synchronicities and meaningful coincidences guide recovery instead of just being “symptoms”? Naas Siddiqui, a psychiatric survivor and therapist in training who founded the Spiritual Emergence and other Unusual Experiences...

What if psychiatry recognized that schizophrenia does not exist? How might diagnostic categories (left over from the asylum era) be replaced by spectrums of experience that show how psychotic experiences can also be normal? What if services were oriented around individuals, not the statistical groups of “evidence based” research? And could the mental health system as we know it, which...

The Families in Mental Health Crisis Act HR 2646 — The Murphy Bill — proposes drastic changes to US mental health policies. Will the Murphy Bill curb violence and improve care? Or will more forced treatment, medication, and hospitalization only enrich pharmaceutical and medical industry power and reinforce stereotypes at the expense of real human needs? Leah Harris, psychiatric abuse s...

Is mental health about individual diseases, or the health of communities and countries as a whole? How do economic policies after the 2008 crisis impact disability rights, suicide rates, and community wellbeing? Are cuts in social spending really necessary for economic growth, or do they cause more problems in the long run? Guardian columnist Mary O’Hara, author of Austerity Bites, discusses...

Psychiatric survivor leader  Oryx  Cohen was at a national conference when a seizure suddenly launched him out of his body and into a visionary state of madness. Avoiding medications or hospitalization, friends held a hotel room vigil for  Oryx  for many sleepless nights, and then drove him 4 days across country to safety. What surprising lessons – about the usefulness of medications, suppor...

Is thinking a cognitive process of information input and output? Or do consciousness and emotion take place in our bodies – animated, moving, and responsive to the environment? And what would Darwin think of today’s focus on brains and neuroscience – is there an evolutionary way to understand the mind instead? Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, dancer, philosopher, and author of more than...

Celebrated US President Abraham Lincoln also suffered from life-threatening depression. Did he view his “melancholy” as a treatable illness, as a punishment from God — or as a source of his gifts? How did Lincoln’s extraordinary leadership abilities arise from his struggle with extreme pain? Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of  Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged...

What if you were the only one seeing coded messages, covert realities, and elaborate plots all around you? Does that make you out of touch with reality, “paranoid” and “psychotic?” Or is it real — but you are just so upset that everyone thinks the problem is you instead? Tim Dreby, a psychotherapist and author in the San Francisco Bay Area, endured a life-threatening...

In schizophrenia really an “incurable illness” — or a state of chronic terror? Are there ways for psychotherapy to reach people in different realities? And can talk therapy offer a humane and empowering approach? Bert Karon, psychoanalyst since 1955, co-author of the classic textbook Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia , and Professor of Clinical Psychology at Michigan State Universit...

Are there ways to reach people in states of madness? How do talking with ghosts, hearing voices, and seeing visions — as well as enduring family turmoil — relate to psychotic crisis? When Dina Tyler discovered the meaning of life in an altered state, the treatment she received only inflicted further trauma. Dina instead embraced her madness as a guiding force for recovery, and found a...

What if ordinary families could provide care for people psychiatry has given up on? Is there a way out for people stuck long-term as mental patients? Can human relationships and living together be more effective than medications, diagnosis, and hospitals? Carina Håkansson’s values wouldn’t allow her to work in the traditional psychiatric system in Sweden. She left to create the Family Care Foundat...

How do we recover from childhood violence? When Lauren Spiro was 14, her father was murdered. Eighteen months later, she began to have unusual spiritual experiences and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Today she works to promote peace and healing in communities, fulfilling the vision she had in her extreme state. Lauren is co-director of Emotional CPR, associate director of the National Coalition...

What if researchers collaborated with patients rather than treating them as “informants” and objects of study? Nev Jones survived her mother’s frightening extreme states — and then her own mind unravelled into different realities. She was herself diagnosed with schizophrenia, and began a lifelong exploration of the uniqueness of madness. Today Nev is a post-doctorate fellow...

Adverse effects from prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death in America. How can we know if the pills we take are actually safe? What can we do if they aren’t? Dr. David Healy, internationally renowned psychiatrist, whistleblower, and author of 20 books, discusses industry corruption of pharmaceutical regulation and proposes better ways to protect patients and prevent harm. htt...

If madness isn’t like other illnesses, what is it? Should psychiatry have the power of legal coercion? How can the legacy of Thomas Szasz inform new ways of helping people? Tomi Gomory, associate professor of social work at Florida State University and co-author of Mad Science: Psychiatric Coercion, Diagnosis, and Drugs , explores thinking beyond the medical model of emotional distress. http...