Hello and welcome. We are excited to host and event around weve been too patient. We will be reading from the contributors and then followed by a Panel Discussion with qanda and all that amazing stuff afterwards, but just want to give you a big round of applause and thanks for coming out because it is important for those like yourself that independent booksellers can keep growing and continue to be around. We are opening up a new location and would love to see you there. A few housekeeping notes for tonight audience qanda right after the Panel Discussion. Then we will move over to his table. For the qanda portion we ask that you keep your questions concise and respectable and for the buck please make sure to pay for them on your way out. We will be open until 10 p. M. Tonight so feel free to add spore. A collection of 25 essays and poems written by and for people with lived experiences of the Mental Health care system in america. From tha the mad pride movemento the Consumer Movement to the informed care even patient and dedicated to finding working alternatives to the Mental HealthIndustrial Complex. Often unexpected ways and places and centering on the truth of the lived experiences. Without further ado i want to bring up two of the panelists. [applause] i am one of the co editors of weve been too patient, so excited you are here on a tuesday night to have a real conversation and to hear all of these Amazing Stories and have a great conversation. On the other coeditor and we are just very grateful to the publisher north atlantic books for hosting and arranging this, so i hope that you and joy the testimony of the voices and thank you very much for being here and to random house for distributing us. [laughter] [applause] first up, the kc gartner, a poet and educator who writes both to heal and critique the intersection between identity and culture. She teaches with both poetry and digital storytellers and has been on three National Poetry slam teams. I think she already has her masters and these biographies are a little older, so welcome to the stage. [applause] im going to practice this so bear with me. Its some older things about myself. Occupational therapy. One year ago, i was in the hospital. I asked myself what i was doing here besides keeping myself safe from the pill bottle. I couldnt sleep in that place. It kept on every 15 minutes yelling in the hallways and sometimes i could still smell the formaldehyde in the blankets and i thought am i supposed to be there now . Is a year enough to be healthy . That question hangs in the air. You say you need more time to learn how to love yourself before you can love me. Three months until i am supposed to start seeing my future, three months until i moved away, three minutes to read the poem. Is any of this enough . Lately ive been hearing everyone say the same thing, or it isnt therapy. Art isnt therapy. I introduced you to poetry because i wanted you to get better. I started getting poetry because i wanted to get better, but did i get better . I had a panic attack before i wrote this. You see the scars on my wrist have not quite healed over. You see how afraid i am going back next i believe im still just a single serving jello cup. A morning pill regime. Part of me is still in a room full of 51 50s, because this is the only way i can heal. If i could see that therapist again, i would tell her this. I got into graduate school yesterday. I spent three months in right apartment, a year ago i didnt think i had a future. To go in public without the voices of demons superimposed on my friends, i made progress. I fixed my bicycle and started eating fruits. When my anxiety creeps into my right breast, i changed. Everyone thinks im still a little crazy. Im so different. Yesterday, you kissed me and i told myself my health is more important than this. Last night, i was supposed to write a poem, memorize it, make it ready for escape but i need cupcakes instead. Im here writing about it now because that is more important than any applause, this page help me in its arm saying you want yourself today . That is more important than being the best writer or artist. I am my best self. Im better than i was yesterday. We are all better than we were yesterday. Isnt that the most important thing . Isnt that the best part, poem ever written . [cheering] [cheering and applauding] thank you, casey. Welcome to the state, the writer ramallah, big round of applause. [applause] infiltrating the Mental HealthIndustrial Complex, the professional paradox, Mental HealthIndustrial Complex functions on division between Mental Health professionals on the one hand and Mental Health patient clients on the other. These Mental Health professionals have the authority to diagnose and label individuals as possessing psychiatric and psychological disability. Supposedly these Mental Health professionals or individuals who do not possess a diagnosis or suffer from Mental Health problems. Mental Health Professionals psychologically called stable. Mental Health Patients are psychologically unstable. Patients and professionals are supposed to be two distinct types of people. This division, separating patients from professionals is rooted in hierarchy based on class, race and ability. Supposedly a person cannot be a patient and a professional at the same time or in the same space. But i am both identities and experiences. On the one hand, i heard a bachelors degree in society and masters in social work and have worked as a Mental Health therapist for over four years. On the other hand, ive gone through Substance Abuse treatment four times into early adulthood. Shortly after obtaining my msw, i experienced a druginduced Mental Health crisis during which i was beaten and tasered by police and psychiatrically hospitalized against my will. Guess who affected this as prescribed my diagnosis . I regularly see a psychiatrist and therapist and i have been taking psychiatric medication ever since my Mental Health crisis. I identify myself as a social worker and therapist. Notwithstanding this, i also felt identifying with history of the madd movement and anti Psychiatry Movement from a self identify as very typical. A mad activists. A survivor of Police Brutality and Mental HealthIndustrial Complex. This brings me to what i would like to name as the patient professional. If the Mental HealthIndustrial Complex stipulates that those are Mental Health professionals are psychologically stable and those who are patients psychologically unstable, in my existence as a patient professional is a paradox. To be a patient professional is to have it a body, mind, space and the place between the binary of the patients and professionals. I understand the experience of being stigmatized or possessing psychiatric disability and understand the legitimate resistance with whom i interact. Navigating this division between patient and professional is a task i find requires almost instinctive complexity, creativity and nuance. [applause] next, we have jesse. Hes a writer and activist working at the intersection of story telling, Mental Health and social justice. She is codirector of the institute for the development of coman art. Unity of advocates and change the Mental Health institute. Her writing has been published. Welcome. [applause] i also want to thank the others so much for putting together this. I think i will feel much better, im dedicating this to my sister. Also, im reading this blog. Its a simple idea. One of the ways we can implement recovery model through narrative. The narrative model to reclaim overwhelming and complex situations. Supports them to reunite imaging stories, constructing better alternatives. A new model for navigating Mental Health. This mode of thinking and talking about Mental Health bears unique stories of individuals. The purpose for their participation in the system that is not supported and excluded them. It validates the fact that it happened. Actual evidence leading to an experience and makes it possible for a person to potentially experience from a distance. The discrepancy between them besides strategy for future problemsolving of a person. The overall potential for growth. Writing is an empowering practice and provides control and delivers a sense of satisfaction. At the end of the day, they understand when extolled as a story. Its missing the power of personal narrative, and essential voice in Mental Health. The voices of those with experience. Mental health is too obscure, too delicate, too intertwined with experience in a single medicalized story. Its not the presence of story altogether. The editors and contributors to this volume firmly believe Mental Health research and practice is improved by those with mental difference. They eliminate the experience of Mental Health for those who would otherwise understand. It allows the audience to bear witness to our stories which has potential to foster stigma. How we feel is implicit in a unique story of our lives. [applause] thank you. Next, cofounder of the project and Mental Health projects. As a masters in social work, because her recovery specialist trainer. Is currently training director for the institute for the development of human parts. [applause] ive got three minutes and i have a long essay that i will not read to you so going to tell you and read you this context. 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. A bunch of the people who were reading tonight have also been involved in it. The network of. Based Mental Health support groups. We started because we are trying to change the language and culture for Mental Health and illness. I went back to school because i saw the Mental Health system needs to change and are people who need to be in the inside. I also went back to school because i was looking for mentorship and more guidelines and trying to understand what it meant to be in. The thing i wrote is called underground transmissions and centering marginalized. Strategies for revision in the public Mental Health system. It was a 58 page paper i wrote about the parachute project. The mobile Treatment Team and everyone on the team was trained in open dialogue, a Family Therapy model. We work working with young people diagnosed with psychotic disorders. The thing was that everyone, half the people on the team were clinicians and half the people are people who work. Specialist, people who were diagnosed with a Mental Illness themselves and working in the system has a different perspective than the clinicians. I was a clinical intern on the team and when i got there, i was like, my clinician, it might appear . I got interested in the working relationship between peers and clinicians. Thats the context. Its academic writing, but the most life writing but well see. [laughter] i have the diagnosed of bipolar, some people think i am grandiose. [laughter] the purpose is to lay intellectual development of a new generation of Mental Health support services. Cooperation between clinicians and echoing. Specialists workforce Mental Health system and actively encouraging the proliferation from a vibrant independent. Led movement that has the power to creatively influence the current culture of Mental Health services. This movement would express influence both within and outside of the public Mental Health system with a common set of Core Principles based on selfdetermination and social justice. If you are excited by that, read the whole thing. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Intersectional feminist writer calling for revolution in how we under stand in response to suicide. Matt in america. A story was featured in got an award. Learn more online. Welcome. [applause] i want to echo everybody elses thanks. In gratitude for making this possible for all of us. Im about to read a poem called dear doctor which was the beginning of me taking my power back. Dear doctor, on that proud, glorious day you graduated from medical school, he took an oath as old as hippocrates, remember . Above all, do no harm, above all, do no harm. Do no harm. No harm. The trouble is, you thought you were doing good by warehousing us in the sterile, oppressive, on hospital craze, you call the hospital. You practice the highest form of tough love there is. So tough, i could see no love. You placed the planes on our brains. Squarely on our territory flow. They link us with one of her diagnosis on whatever page of your book you found appropriate at the time. You thought you could turn around, make us into productive future citizens, make us fit into this authoritarian sexist, racist, homophobic trance publi. Your generation, the greatest generation. You always insisted that we were the problem and you where the solution but your treatment, your directed issue from on high did not heal our brains, did not open our hearts, they clearly transformed them into lumps of bitter rage. If anything, dear doctor, you taught me how to act, all the worlds a stage, you pushed me to Award Winning performances. The award being life away from your different lives. The scribbles on a prescription pad, the 15 minutes you gave me. In a word, dear doctor, the award was freedom, or at least a glimmer. Perhaps i give you too much credit, assuming you saw us as something more than business as usual. Dear doctor, youll never know in your ivory secondfloor room from how many years ive spent sweating and struggling to unseal all the harm you did with the best of intentions, paving my road to hell. I declare war on all you scribbled in my chart, building a new chart, turning humanity and dignity with scribbles and shouts of my own and all the while, hippocrates bones are twitching in their graves. Dear doctor. [cheering] thank you. Next, my amazing co editor, co edited and contributed and published and performed in many other venues. Poetry, nonfiction, and a literary fellow. English professor at the college. Welcome. [applause] thank you all for being here. Thank you to the contributors, im proud to be in this course with you. Thats kind of the theme of what i wanted to share with you tonight, my part of the introduction. The part that i wrote. As i write my part in the introduction, they have brought this interbreeding, i bring this with excitement and trepidation. I want to claim my seat at this table and by doing that, im compelled to disclose that i, to, and Mental Health consumer, psychiatric survivor, lifelong patient, Mental Health advocate with experience but i must claim the others, too. As a consumer, i am frustrated with superstition are insufficient, at best. As a survivor, im healing from traumas inflicted on me by the Mental HealthIndustrial Complex. I have many stories to tell about psychiatry and therapy limitations. To say im a Mental Health advocate and not just a survivor, i must admit theres another reason i would like to close myself with that title. It feels mutual, as well as psychiatric, is held within room of less stigmatizing thomas. My everyday stress can be labeled as depression or anxiety, but i feel compelled to expose more. My reluctance to a certain stems from the ablest capitalist structure power which is the thing this book resists. I fear the stigma that could cause me to lose my job, a job i worked very hard to land. My work with this brings forth another desire. The other contributors to this book are helping me take this stand because the slogan is vital in a major strength of this book. Every story comes from someone with lived experiencing and denying this structure counters the ambition of this project. I believe my diagnosis of bipolar is really a complex response to Early Childhood thomas. I have many tools, mutual aid, therapy, creativity, spirituality but the biggest tool for me is radical acceptance but i will have hard days still. With this book, i give myself permission to be out and proud as a survivor advocate. Let me say it here, because of trauma and perhaps predisposition, i am narrowly typical. I have dangerous gifts and because of that i have mad pride, a pride that calls on me to heal the ragged edges that i call my differences to be a force for change. [cheering and applauding] collect, my coeditor is an advocate featured in the documentary and oprah magazine. Its now released today. [laughter] [applause] thank you. So many people came since the last time i was up here. No worries, all good. I will read a poem to you and we will break for our panel. You have five minutes for you to stretch and do selfcare things. This is called, she wasnt crazy. She wasnt crazy but the world had a way of making her feel sore. You try being a