I’ve been involved with Bay Area Icarus for over a year now.  In that time, not only have I watched internal conflict and miscommunications tear apart our group, but I have heard many stories from around the country of other Icarus Project groups falling apart over the years due to groups not knowing how to deal with conflict and disagreement. We all want to create a safe and supportive space, but unless we find a way to hold each other accountable and resolve conflict in a respectful way, it seems that we are inevitably just going to keep getting harmed.  If we want to develop long term, sustainable support networks we need to find ways to heal harm done within our communities so that everyone involved can feel respected and heard. 

The Mind(ful) Liberation Project in Richmond, VA - an Icarus-inspired local group - is selling some great "Peer Support Now" t-shirts to fund their distro work. Check em out and buy 1 or 2.

$7 each, get them while you can

"If madness isn’t what biopsychiatry says it is, what is it? If we don’t agree with what biopsychiatry says, then we probably don’t agree with the treatment practices. For us to have some kind of intelligible answer to a first-year psychiatry intern who can tell you: it’s a brain disorder and every minute that it’s not being medicated, there’s irreparable damage being done.  The people who fund the research are the big phama companies that psychiatry represents.  A psychiatrist now can see 30-40 clients a day. Psychiatry says: this group of Icarus folks can sing Kumbaya all you want, but we own it.  I don’t believe that."

Crooked Beauty is a poetic documentary that chronicles The Icarus Project's co-founder Jacks McNamara’s transformative journey from psych ward inpatient to pioneering mental health advocacy. It will be screening at 3 festivals in the UK this fall. Come out if you are in England or Scotland!

This Wax and Feathers zine was a collaborative work by a group of super talented folks who post on the Icarus Project forums.

They write in the intro:

"In expressing our feelings, insights, and ideas about madness and the world around us we hope to inform and inspire others. The stories told by the psychiatric establishment, pharmaceutical industry, and the mainstream media all to often overshadow our own. By sharing our stories with others we can reclaim the right to define ourselves and our experiences. We choose to honor our uniqueness and complexity by letting our voices be heard."

Download it! Print it out! Share it with your peeps! Mad Love!

http://www.theicarusproject.net/files/waxandfeathers.pdf

The Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, published by The Icarus Project and Freedom Center, is now available in Greek - thanks to the dedicated volunteer translation work of Marianna Kefallinou and Katerina Tsantila and the design work of Vassilis Betsis. You can download the Greek version here.

Οδηγός Μείωσης της Βλάβης για τη Διακοπή των Ψυχιατρικών Φαρμάκων