Author: Chaya

guest post by Ben Ross I’d rather listen to someone than suggest they take psych drugs:    Because I know listening has helped me through times of powerful anxiety and despair, when medications did not. Because I know listening and connection have effects on the brain that are more powerful and lasting than psychiatric medications. Read More

Disclaimer: I am not suicidal, nor did I have a plan for suicide when I wrote this piece. And Gosh I wish disclaimers like this didn’t feel so necessary. Gosh I wish the psychiatric pharmaceutical industrial complex police state could not monitor my written medicine even one iota. I’m so alone in this world-yet I Read More

Guest post by Dabney Alix. If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” ~ Wayne Dyer I love this quote. I see it as particularly relevant to the complex intersection between mental health and spirituality. In the psychiatric camp, a chemical imbalance in your brain can be fixed Read More

A woman who lives in Australia contacted me recently for support.  She has been isolated in her desire to be free of psychiatry and needs to remain anonymous due to a court order but asked that I share her email address here so that others who are seeking mutual support by Skype might contact her: Read More

by Tina Minkowitz Survivors Need Our Own Media originally posted at https://chrusp.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/survivors-need-our-own-media/ Survivors* have a complicated relationship to the Mad in America blog site.  Many of us blog there and the subject matter is of vital interest as it concerns our lived experience, but the site is not survivor-controlled and it is not meant to be accountable Read More

Many psychiatric survivors have created a gift economy of sorts in offering peer support, and this is by no means to criticize those offering their best guidance freely to those who desperately need it. In fact, the gift economy saved my life when it was threatened by psychiatric drugs. Most of us who have come Read More

1. Stop reading this article right now. Close your computer/phone/tablet and a) sweep your room b) write a page in your journal c) organize your fridge d) throw away 10% of what’s in your sock drawer e) look at the sky. 2. Assuming you did something and came back, talk to yourself out loud. Again, Read More

Due to inequality in the world, if you have a lot of money and resources, others have parts of your soul.  If you don’t have money, property or assets, you have parts of other people’s souls they need to pay you for. Same with health. If you are very healthy, people who are sick have Read More

I’m sad that life changes. I don’t need matter of fact slogans, like, “The only thing you can count on is change,” rather I need to weep and mourn change. It seems important to respect sadness as one way to acknowledge the passing of time, the reality that everything is constantly changing, and not try Read More