Madness Radio: Voices And Visions from Outside Mental Health explores 'madness' from beyond conventional perspectives and mainstream treatments, featuring survivors, authors, advocates, professionals, and artists.

Hosted by Will Hall, with guest co-hosts Jacks McNamara and Jessica Gallinger, Madness Radio launched in 2005 on Valley Free Radio and aired more than 200 shows since then. We've been broadcast on KBOO in Oregon, syndicated on other stations through Pacifica, and currenrly podcasting on Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes, Pandora, and Google Play. More info on our About page.

Check out the Madness Radio book! Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness gathers edited show interviews and additional content, and is available in print and as a free download.

Madness Radio is an affiliate of Mad In America Radio!
Check out www.madinamerica.com. Theme music courtesy Bonfire Madigan. Thanks to past Madness Radio Producers Jenka Soderberg, Nina Packebush, Leah Harris and Jeremy Lanzman. And thanks to our 190+ Madness Radio Kickstarter donors for supporting the show!

Listen to recent shows below or find us in your favorite podcast app, subscribe to be notified of new episodes on the right, browse by topics, search by keyword, or see a list all 200+ shows by date and title, in the archive. (Shorter versions are also available.)

Madness Radio is creative commons copyright! Please copy, post, and share freely. And get involved: send topic ideas, leave comments, ask FM stations to air us, leave an iTunes review, or make a donation.

Julie Spooner: Urban Shamanism

First Aired 10-18-2006 | Add comment

Urban Shamanism with Julie Spooner, licensed psychologist from Brooklyn New York. Julie discusses a spiritual healing approach to madness and psychosis, including journeying through visionary states into alternate dimensions and interacting with illness and imbalance in their energetic and mystical forms.

Are people labeled ‘psychotic’ journeying to other dimensions like shamans do, but without realizing it? How can people learn to control these experiences as gifts rather than curses?

Julie can be reached at (718) 773-3338.

Robert Whitaker: Violence and Madness

First Aired 10-11-2006 | Add comment
Whitaker: Mad in America

Violence and Madness with Robert Whitaker, Pulitzer-nominated author of “Mad In America,” discussing the role of psychiatric drugs in causing violence, the history of coercive psychiatric treatments, and responses to the recent murder of prominent psychiatrist Wayne Fenton by his patient.

Bruce Levine: “Commonsense Rebellion”

First Aired 10-04-2006 | 1 comment | Add comment
Bruce Levine

Commonsense Rebellion with Bruce Levine, dissident psychologist and author of Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations, and a World Gone Crazy, discusses the social forces that drive people to depression, anxiety, and mental breakdown, and how community and caring are the way to a healthier self and world.

Ruta Mazelis: Cutting Edge Self Injury

First Aired 09-27-2006 | 2 comments | Add comment
Ruta Mazelis

Self-injury and cutting with Ruta Mazelis, psychiatric abuse survivor and editor for 17+ years of the acclaimed newsletter “The Cutting Edge”. Cutting, burning, head banging and other self-harm are discussed from the point of view of people doing them — as coping mechanisms that need compassion and understanding, not the force and judgment of mainstream psychiatry.

Check out http://www.healingselfinjury.org

Kate Bornstein: “Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide”

First Aired 09-20-2006 | 2 comments | Add comment
Kate Bornstein

Transsexual writer and activist Kate Bornstein on her book Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws. Kate overturns the orthodox either-or labels of male / female and straight/gay/bi with her postmodern sexuality of self-definition and fluid identity.

Kate is the author of the highly successful books My Gender Workbook and Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and The Rest of Us, and her new book takes a transgressive and honest approach to what it takes to stay alive in a crazy world.

http://www.katebornstein.com

Delphine Brody: Policy Advocacy

First Aired 09-13-2006 | Add comment
Delphine Brody

Delphine Brody is a psych survivor and advocate with the California Network of Mental Health Clients who has years of experience working for substantial policy change on the local, state, and national level.

Delphine also addresses efforts to stop forced outpatient commitment laws in California in the wake of the recent tragic murder of psychiatrist Dr. Wayne Fenton.

Coming Off Medications w/Oryx Cohen

First Aired 08-30-2006 | 2 comments | Add comment
meds

Oryx Cohen and Will Hall of the Freedom Center discuss how to reduce and go off psychiatric drugs safely. Oryx is diagnosed with bipolar disorder and Will with schizophrenia, and both are medication-free.

They talk about their own experiences as well as general principles and things to keep in mind for anyone working to reduce or go off psychiatric drugs, lessons learned from 5 years of working with the Freedom Center support group and helping people reduce and go off drugs successfully.

Environmental Illness and Mental Health

First Aired 08-02-2006 | Add comment

Reason, pseudonym of Valley Free Radio’s Antidote Radio host, discusses multiple chemical sensitivity, environmental illness, toxins in our surroundings, food, and bodies, and how this affects our mental health and overall wellbeing. Your diagnosis might be from chemical exposure! Learn about how to address this important issue.

http://www.antidoteradio.com

David Oaks: Mindfreedom International

First Aired 07-19-2006 | Add comment
David Oaks

David Oaks, Director of Mindfreedom International, the leading psychiatric survivor human rights coalition, talks about his 30 years of experience as a movement activist, Mindfreedom’s work, and strategies and visions for challenging corporate psychiatric control of mental health care.

David also hosts the weekly Mindfreedom News Hour radio show at http://www.theprn.org

Barney Plisko: Life With Bipolar Diagnosis

First Aired 06-14-2006 | Add comment

Barney Plisko, longtime Freedom Center member who has struggled for years with extreme states of consciousness, discusses living with a bipolar diagnosis, dealing with the mental health system, efforts at recovery, and the different ways his condition has disrupted and undermined his life — as well as offered unexpected opportunities and gifts.

Darby Penney: Willard Hospital Suitcase Exhibit

First Aired 05-04-2006 | Add comment
Willard Hospital Suitcase Exhibit

Leading survivor advocate Darby Penney on the exhibit created from suitcases found in the attic of the old Willard State Hospital asylum in New York, illustrating the forgotten lives of patients there.

http://www.suitcaseexhibit.org

John Judge: Government Mind Control

First Aired 04-05-2006 | Add comment
John Judge

John Judge was active in the 1970s psychiatric survivor movement and is now special assistant to Congressperson Cynthia KcKinney. John discusses MKULTRA and other US psychiatric mind control experiments, which involved torture of thousands of mental patients. Judge also looks at the Jonestown massacre, LSD, and the convergence of Nazism with the roots of biomedical psychiatry.

John McCarthy: Irish Mental Health Advocacy

First Aired 03-28-2006 | 4 comments | Add comment
John McCarthy

Ireland Activist and Poet John McCarthy, Mindfreedom International representative to the United Nations, discusses being “normally mad,” recovery, the UN Disability Convention, and challenging system abuses, in dialogue with Will Hall and co-host Oryx Cohen.

John also responds to callers, and reads a very moving poem about the death of a friend in the system. A very popular show.

Paula Caplan: Deciding Who is Normal

First Aired 03-15-2006 | Add comment
Paula Caplan

Harvard University faculty Paula Caplan, author of They Say You’re Crazy: How The World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal and editor of Bias In Psychiatric Diagnosis.

Paula was on one of the writing committees for the DSM and offers an insightful perspective on the politics behind psychiatric pseudo-science. She discusses mental disorder labeling, including bipolar and post-trauma stress disorder, from a feminist perspective.

http://www.psychdiagnosis.net
http://paulajcaplan.net