About the Series
This event is part of a new talk series inspired by IDHA’s Transformative Mental Health Core Curriculum. It features members of our teaching faculty team and dives into timely topics that intersect with our transformative mental health lens. Enrollment for the curriculum is now open, and you can learn more here.
About the Event
Many mental health providers and advocates enter the field with the intention to make a difference, but find that the tools they are given aren’t enough, and the system doesn’t support lasting healing and change. As people cycle in and out of mental health services, mainstream discourse tends to individualize the problem – but what if the system itself is actually to blame? Meanwhile, a growing number of people are challenging the current paradigm and uplifting new approaches, asking critical questions like: Are there better ways of providing support? How can we bridge the gap between the reality of mental health services and a world in which people’s autonomy and self-determination are truly centered?
Join IDHA on Monday, September 18 to hear from people who have found healing outside the formal mental health care system, with critical wisdom to impart for those working within it. A panel of activists, survivors, and providers will share how they practice a transformative approach to mental health that honors choice and authenticity. Uplifting a diversity of roles and relationships to mental health, panelists will share how they have fostered community to bring about change in and outside the system, reflecting on the power of collectivity to support transformation. The event aims to instill a feeling of hope and connection, reminding us that we are not alone and a more liberatory future is possible.
This event is open to mental health workers and clinicians, researchers, educators, activists, survivors, peers, current and prior service users, writers, artists, and other advocates – anyone who is interested in exploring the link between personal and societal transformation.
Register in advance via Eventbrite to join. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about how to join.
Donations
IDHA is a small organization that strives to meet the accessibility needs of our community to the best of our ability. Our events are by tiered suggested donation to ensure we can provide closed captions on our events and other programs, though we strive to never turn anyone away. We appreciate donations of any size for those who have capacity to give.
Access
ASL interpretation + automated closed captioning will be provided. The event will be recorded and shared with all registrants. Please submit any additional access needs to contact@idha-nyc.org.
Panelists
Ji-Youn Kim
Ji-Youn Kim (they/she) is a queer, currently non-disabled Corean femme, immigrant and settler, liberatory dreamer, psych survivor, justice-oriented therapist-ish, and ongoing creation of community. Born in Bucheon, Corea, they grew up and continue to live in what is colonially known as Vancouver, Canada, on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. With collective liberation as their vision, they aim to disrupt carceral practices of the mental health industry & its complicities and envision new ways of mental health care rooted in cultural and collective healing. Her work is informed by Black & Indigenous feminist scholars, abolitionists, land defenders, and organizers, as well as her own lived experiences and embodied knowledges.
Caroline Mazel-Carlton
Caroline Mazel-Carlton (she/her) has laid her head in a number of places, from Indiana jail cells to Texas psychiatric units, but now enjoys a freer existence as Director of Training for the Wildflower Alliance and member of the Board of Directors of the Hearing Voices Network-USA. Caroline’s passion is centering and exploring the experiences that are often the most silenced, such as suicide, trauma and non-consensus reality states. Her work with “Alternatives to Suicide” and the Hearing Voices Network has been featured in a number popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Foreign Policy and O magazine. She has contributed to multiple academic publications on the topic of suicide and one book on her experience skating on a roller derby team as #18 “Mazel Tov Cocktail."
Jacks McNamara
Jacks McNamara is a trauma healing coach, facilitator, educator, writer and artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Jacks has been in private practice for 11 years, with a specialty in supporting queer and trans trauma survivors, and in mentoring new queer and trans healing practitioners. They have been peer counseling, facilitating support groups, teaching art and writing classes, and leading workshops around radical mental health since 2004. Jacks is a member of the Generative Somatics Politicized Healers Network and a graduate of the gs Somatics and Trauma practitioner training program. In 2002 Jacks co-founded The Icarus Project, now known as the Fireweed Collective, an international support network and participatory adventure in mutual aid and healing justice. Co-author of Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness, their life and work are the subject of the poetic documentary Crooked Beauty. Jacks also hosts the podcast So Many Wings, a series of conversations at the intersection of social justice and transformative mental health. You can find them on the web at https://jacksmcnamara.net.
Vesper Moore
Vesper Moore is an Indigenous political activist, trainer, writer, and psychiatric survivor. They have been advocating for disability justice for over a decade and have been the recipient of many social justice and diversity awards. Vesper has brought the perspectives of mad, labeled mentally ill, neurodivergent, disabled people, and survivors to national and international spaces. They have experience working as a consultant for both the United States government and the United Nations in shaping strategies around trauma, intersectionality, and disability rights. They have been at the forefront of legislative reform to shift the societal paradigm around mental health. Vesper has made it their life’s mission to rewrite the ableist narratives surrounding mental health and disability in our society.
Moderator
Noah Gokul
Noah Gokul (they/them) is the Program Coordinator for the Institute for the Development of Human Arts (IDHA). They are a Queer multidisciplinary artist and educator here to create liberated worlds through art, storytelling, and sound. They grew up in Oakland, CA/unceded Ohlone land, and identify as a trauma survivor with sensitivities to the world around them. They use music and art for meaning-making and the healing of others, integrating these passions into their work as a peer for young adults in a first-episode psychosis program. They have facilitated in a wide variety of settings, at the intersections of anti-oppression, trauma, incarceration, Caribbean ancestry, music, and mental health. Through their incantations they create spaces of radical imagination and possibility.