Paula Caplan: 'If you wanted to make someone feel helpless, hopeless, even crazy, one good way to do it would be this: ...give them a pill that may calm them down or pep them up but will have a good chance of increasing their weight. This has been the fate of women in untold numbers but certainly in the millions, and women’s position in American society makes them more likely than men to feel ashamed for their part in what is being called this country’s obesity epidemic."

Alex Samets wrote this strategy and vision essay as part of the In The Middle Of A Whirlwind journal:

TIP works to bring a discussion of mental health into community spaces and to make narratives of internal struggle part of narratives of collective struggle. As an organization, we are mindfully creating our own narratives, authoring the documents that build our histories, and crafting future realities from our desires.

South African graduate psychology student Niyati Evers research paper on shamanism and schizophrenia, including an interview with a Botswana sangoma - spirit healer - and discussion of process-oriented psychology.

Steven Morgan's excellent deconstruction of the scientific myths and politics that go into mental health diagnosis and treatment, including a detailed resource section.

I've struggled with melancholy since early youth-ranging from suicidal crisis-to blanketing sorrow-to months of numb depression. Sometimes sadness comes when I see a styrofoam cup and think about the environmental damage our society is causing; when I think about rape and war; or when I think about a friend in an abusive relationship. Sometimes I'm sad for no clear reason. Feeling sad about the world, and tending toward depression in general, has been a major motivating force for my activism, yet conversely, that same sensitivity can have a paralyzing effect which prevents me from being the non-stop activist I idealize. Learning to work with my depression, rather than against it has been necessary. I learn to try to flow with my moods, fighting the sorrow less, accepting the melancholy into my life as a teacher who keeps me in touch with the destruction of the planet.

Icarus member Steven Smiles put together these notes summarizing the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Download attached file.

In order to understand mental health we need a new language that speaks from the point of view of the person who wants to heal, not from the psychiatric industry, which seeks to judge and categorize people, with the intent of medicating them. These labels that have been created to describe mental illness; bipolar disorder, depression, disassociative identity disorder, etcetera. These labels were created for psychiatrists so that they could diagnosis their patients. What do they do for you and I?