CityViews: Is New York’s Mental-Health System Listening to the Peers Who’ve Lived It?

Originally posted in City Limits  By Noah Phillips Unless you have direct experience with New York City’s mental health infrastructure, you are likely unaware of a unique set of professionals known as Peer Specialists, or Peer Workers. Peers are certified individuals with lived experience of mental health challenges who utilize… Continue reading

The Spiritual Gift of Madness

In a couple weeks I’m speaking on a panel called: New Mad Pride Movement: “Schizophrenics” and “Bipolars” as the New Spiritual Vanguard? at the Left Forum with Seth Farber who wrote the book The Spiritual Gift of Madness: The Failure of Psychiatry and the Rise of the Mad Pride Movement. John… Continue reading

People’s DSM Project

Friends: I have a to take a class for Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College this summer called “Human Behavior 3” which is basically a bunch of students having to memorize the DSM-V. I’ve been putting off learning the DSM for many years (see this essay I wrote… Continue reading

Connecting the Dots: Disability Incarcerated

“Is it surprising” asked Michel Foucault, “that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons”? Thus begins, Disability Incarcerated, a recent book about the intersection between disability justice activism and the Prison Industrial Complex. It is the first book of its kind, recently published, and it is actively… Continue reading

When oppression is the pathogen: The participatory development of socially just mental health practice.

It’s amazing how relevant my MSW program is to my work with The Icarus Project right now. I’m writing a paper for my Clinical Practice Lab class and reading this incredibly relevant and useful article to the Mad Maps project which has consumed much of my creative energy for the last year.… Continue reading