As the movement for racial justice gains momentum in the United States, there has been a lot of conversation around how to divest funding from the police and reallocate it to mental health care. Although the notion to replace “cops” with “care” is well-intentioned, psychiatric survivors, their family members, and advocates are well acquainted with the oppressive nature of the mental health system. Too often, both mainstream and progressive group discussions immediately revert to a model of "caring" for "the mentally ill" in hospitals and other confined settings that are functionally no different than the jails and prisons that they propose to replace.
IDHA seeks to advance a discussion of alternatives to policing and criminal justice that is rooted in the lived experience of mental health service users and survivors. In this context, it is crucial to center the particular ways in which psychiatry has been used to exert control over Black bodies, not unlike the prison system. From the historically racist roots of diagnosis; to the ways in which the pain of racial oppression is erased or made invisible due to the subjective nature of psychiatric diagnosis; to the significantly higher rates at which Black communities are diagnosed with “serious mental illness,” it’s clear that replacing policing with more mental health care is not the answer.
September 2020
About: With Decarcerating Care: Taking Policing Out of Mental Health Crisis Response, IDHA brought together frontline organizers with a range of perspectives on how to maintain the safety and health of our communities in ways that are free from the police, rooted in survivors' experience, and designed to preserve the rights and autonomy of those in crisis.
Panelists: Asantewaa Boykin, Tim Black, Stella Akua Mensah, Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu, and Neil Gong
Moderator: Noah Gokul
Resources: Watch the event on YouTube in panel view or speaker view; access the closed caption transcript; and view resources specific to this panel conversation.
March 2021
About: With Decarcerating Care: Challenging Criminalization and Control in Mental Health, IDHA deconstructed the prevailing narrative around the decriminalization of mental illness and explored ways in which public mental health services and well-meaning "reforms" inherently uphold the ongoing coercion and control of marginalized communities.
Panelists: Marco Barrios, Dustin Gibson, Victoria Law, Kendra McLaughlin, Yazan Za3za3
Moderator: Grace Ortez
Resources: Watch the event on YouTube in panel view or speaker view; access the closed caption transcript; and view resources specific to this panel conversation.
September 2021
About: With Decarcerating Care: Laying the Foundations for Liberated Practice, IDHA brought together mental health workers, individuals with lived experience, and activists working in and outside of intersecting systems to present concrete steps and tools for decarcerating practice, as well as methods for caring for ourselves in the face of institutional barriers.
Panelists: Erica Woodland, Iresha Picot, Jess Stohlmann-Rainey, Renaya Furtick Wheelan, and Vivianne Guevara
Moderator: Jacqui Johnson
Resources: Watch the event on YouTube in panel view; access the closed caption transcript and view resources specific to this panel conversation.
March 2022
About: With Decarcerating Care: Community-Based Healing Alternatives and How to Build Them, we sought to explore the ways in which white supremacy plays out in the mental health system and movement spaces, and how we can draw upon traditional knowledge and lived experience to create more accountable, effective, and healing-centered alternatives.
Panelists: Aida Manduley, Vesper Moore, Yolo Akili Robinson, Gretchen Rohr, and Anjali Nath Upadhyay
Moderator: Mayowa Obasaju
Resources: Watch the event on YouTube in panel view; access the closed caption transcript and view resources specific to this panel conversation.
October 2022
About: With Decarcerating Care: The Evolution of Mental Health Surveillance, we examined how systems of surveillance intersect with mental health and disability by reviewing historical examples and exposing present-day iterations.
Panelists: Idil Abdillahi, Azza Altiraifi, Yana Calou, Talila "TL" Lewis, and Shawna Murray-Browne
Moderator: Selima Jumarali
Resources: Watch the event on YouTube in panel view; access the closed caption transcript and view resources specific to this panel conversation.
April 2023
About: With Decarcerating Care: Histories of Coercion and Dreams for Liberated Futures, we explored how institutionalization has long operated as a tool of social control, disproportionately impacting Black and Brown communities, manifesting today in the expansion of involuntary commitment directives nationally.
Panelists: James Burch, Theo Henderson, Chacku Mathai, Rob Wipond, and Kelechi Ubozoh
Moderator: Tatyana Nduta
Resources: Watch the event on YouTube in panel view; access the closed caption transcript and view resources specific to this panel conversation.
Other Events
December 2023
About: With the community event Political Uses of Mental Health Laws in the U.S. and Canada Today, we welcomed back panelists Kelechi Ubozoh and Rob Wipond to delve deeper into how we define and understand “political” uses of psychiatric detention and commitment powers in a contemporary North American context.
Resources: Watch the event on YouTube, and access the closed caption transcript.
IDHA collects responses from our community to gather diverse perspectives on this topic, and initiate dialogue that leads to collaborative action. Engaging with a range of perspectives and embracing complexity is at the heart of what we strive to do.
We want to hear from you: In your view, why is the current approach to mental health care not working? What is your vision for community safety and care?
Fill out the form and let us know your thoughts.
Reading
Abolition Across social movements
Abolition Must Include Psychiatry by Stella Akua Mensah for the Disability Visibility Project
Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition by Liat Ben-Moshe
Defund the Police - Invest in Community Care: A Guide to Alternative Mental Health Crisis Responses by Interrupting Criminalization
Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada by Liat Ben-Moshe
Disability Justice Is an Essential Part of Abolishing Police and Prisons by TL Lewis
Madness, Disability, And Abolition: A Call For Movement Solidarity by anonymous
Madness, Disability And Abolition: Healing In Autonomous Communities by anonymous
Abolition: A Journal and Community of Radical Theory & Practice
Prison by Any Other Name by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law
Reformist Reforms vs. Abolitionist Steps in Policing by Critical Resistance
Colonialism and Psychiatry
Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
Critical Psychiatry
The hidden costs of the mental-health industry’s expansion by the Seattle Times
Mental American Monster: The Sprawl of American Psychiatry by Lauren Tenney
Disability and policing
Black, Disabled and at Risk: The Overlooked Problem of Police Violence Against Americans with Disabilities by Abigail Abrams for TIME
Disability Rights Activists Take On Twin Pandemics of Racist Police Brutality & COVID-19 by Democracy Now
“Defunding the Police” and People with Mental Illness by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
Police keep using ‘excited delirium’ to justify brutality. It’s junk science. by Méabh O'Hare, Joshua Budhu, and Altaf Saadi for the Washington Post
Disability Justice
The 10 Principles of Disability Justice by Sins Invalid
A Disability History of the United States by Kim Nielson
Care Webs: Experiments in Creating Collective Access by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
MaD studies
Madness, Violence, and Power: A Critical Collection edited by Andrea Daley, Lucy Costa, and Peter Beresford
Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies edited by Brenda A. LeFrancois, Rober Menzies, and Geoffrey Reaume
Mandated Treatment and medication
Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America by Anthony Ryan Hatch
Tranquil Prisons: Chemical Incarceration under Community Treatment Orders by Erick Fabris
community and connection
How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong
Narratives of Lived Experience
The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny
The Hospital Always Wins by Issa Ibrahim
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn Saks
The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang
The Color of Hope: People of Color Mental Health Narratives edited by Vanessa Hazzard and Iresha Picot
oppression, identity, and mental health
Black Madness :: Mad Blackness by Therí Alyce Pickens
Containing Madness: Gender and ‘Psy’ in Institutional Contexts by Jennifer M. Kilty and Erin Dej
The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Jonathan Meztl
policing and social work
Social Workers are Rejecting Calls for Them to Replace Police by Mia Sato for The Appeal
What Defunding the Police Means for Mental Health by Tyra Bosnic for Teen Vogue
Why Social Workers Cannot Work With Police by Lori James-Townes for Slate
We Don’t Need Cops to Become Social Workers: We Need Peer Support + Community Response Networks by Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu
Radical Social Work
Radical Social Work by Roy Victor Bailey and Mike Brake
Rethinking suicide prevention
Helping the Suicide Person by Stacey Freedenthal
Rational Suicide, Irrational Laws by Susan Stefan
Suicide and Agency: Anthropological Perspectives on Self-Destruction, Personhood, and Power edited by Ludek Broz and Daniel Münster
Suicide: Foucault, History, and Truth by Ian Marsh
Roots of mental distress
Unrecovery Star by Recovery in the Bin
Transformative Justice
The Fictions and Futures of Transformative Justice by Walidah Imarisha, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, adrienne maree brown, and Mia Mingus
Steps to End Prisons & Policing: A Mixtape on Transformative Justice by Just Practice Collaborative
Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Videos and Podcasts
Abolition and decoloniality
Build Abolition 101 Series by CCSF Collective
Feral Visions Podcast by Liberation Spring
Radical social work
Community Crisis Response
We Take Care of Us: Community Crisis Response Webinar Series by Justice Teams Network
Critical Psychiatry
Dr. James Davies: The Origins of the DSM by the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry
Suicide
Trainings and Worksheets
Abolitionist Crisis Response
Skills-Based Crisis Response Training Through a Disability Justice & Abolitionist Lens by Project LETS
disability justice
Disability Justice Law Syllabus by Dustin Gibson
Community care
Pod Mapping Worksheet by Mia Mingus
Mapping Our Roles in Social Change Ecosystems by Deepa Iyer
Non-Carceral CARE
Peer Respite Handbook: A Guide to Understanding, Building and Supporting Peer Respites by Intentional Peer Support
Questions to Ask Your New Care Provider by Dandelion Hill
Peer support
Rethinking suicide Prevention
Systems of Oppression and Mental Health
Service Directories
Abolition Centered Care Provider Database by Dandelion Hill
Resource Compilations and Fact Sheets
Alternatives to Police in Mental Health Response Fact Sheet by Justice Teams
Don’t Call the Police - Community-based alternatives in your city
Emotional + Mental Health Community Resource Guide compiled by Dandelion Hill
Community accountability, restorative justice, & transformative justice resource list compiled by Aida Manduley
Mental health resources, crisis hotlines, and strategies for dealing with dysregulation compiled by Aida Manduley