Registration is now closed for Crossroads of Crisis!
See you for our next series in Fall 2023!
Series Overview
“The times are urgent. Let us slow down." - Bayo Akomolafe
We live in times laden with crisis: multiple pandemics, the continued spread of fascism and settler colonialism, mass militarization and state violence, environmental degradation, and widespread economic decline. As news headlines draw attention to the global “emergency” of mental health, the experience of it is often located within individuals – with a focus on stabilizing, eradicating, and invisibilizing distress. As a result, mental health systems are imbued with a sense of fear, saviorism, and a rush to restore baseline functioning. Responses to crisis are often led by credentialed professionals beholden to liability and ensnared with the carceral state. Recently, there has been particular emphasis on crisis lines, such as the recent roll-out of “988” in the U.S. Although these resources have been life-saving for many, realizing a future that can authentically hold and respond to people’s pain will require more radical change.
Let’s dream bigger!
One synonym for crisis is “crossroads.” This moment offers us a significant opportunity to transform what crisis is, and what care can look like. The number of innovative programs and services (e.g. respite centers, psychiatric advance directives) that nurture autonomy and self-determination is growing, as is the understanding our trauma has multiple roots. We ask: What could happen if our crises were widely understood not as a personal failure, but as a symptom of a world that is suffering? What if our care systems prioritized resourcing communities, rather than “outsourcing” to professionals? What if we met these global inflection points with a vast spectrum of collective care tools and networks?
IDHA’s Fall 2022/Spring 2023 Training Series, Crossroads of Crisis, reimagines the crisis continuum – interrogating what crisis is, where it comes from, how to respond to it with curiosity and compassion, and the role of peers, providers, and communities. Building on former IDHA offerings Crisis as Catalyst and Cultivating Community, we will ground our learning in the voices of lived experience and approach the theme of crisis from multiple lenses and dimensions. Drawing inspiration and lessons from current community-based efforts, we will practice how to disrupt paradigms of coercion, create personal codes of ethics, and attune to the needs of those we support in professional and nonprofessional roles. We hope you will join us in building a world beyond 988.
“Interesting contrast of facilitation in terms of a more academic vs. on-the-ground perspective that complemented each other really well. I liked the way facilitators shared space with one another. The topics were right up my alley and so relevant to my lived experience and current struggles in life and in community. I adored chatting with classmates too and sharing vulnerability."
—IDHA training participant, cultivating community
Schedule
Registration includes the 3-hour class session, an optional 90-minute discussion group one week after the live class, and access to IDHA’s School for Transformative Mental Health on Mighty Networks. This is our virtual learning community where you’ll have the opportunity to engage with other students and your faculty.
Recording: Please note that all main sessions will be recorded and shared with registrants, in case you aren’t able to show up live.
Accessibility: ASL translation and live closed captioning will be provided for all main class sessions (not including the discussion groups).
Discussion Groups: This training series will integrate a series of optional discussion groups, one per class, to complement the main sessions taught by faculty. The aim of the discussion group sessions is to provide a lightly-facilitated space for participants to further explore topics and themes brought up in each class. Groups will be 90 minutes long, and take place on Zoom one week after each class on a Sunday afternoon from 12-1:30 pm EST. Participants will have the opportunity to help shape these spaces and submit questions/comments for consideration within each discussion group . The date/time for each discussion group is included below, alongside the date of the main class session.
Date and Time |
Course Title and Faculty |
|
|---|---|---|
| Sunday, November 13, 2022 12-3 pm EST |
The Crisis Industry: How Capitalism, Cops, and Coercion Shape Care Today
Jess Stohlmann-Rainey and Kelechi Ubozoh | ENROLL |
| Sunday, December 11, 2022 12-3 pm EST |
Shifting Mindset to Shift Practice: Visions for a Liberated Crisis Response
Ysabel Garcia and Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu | ENROLL |
| Sunday, January 15, 2023 12-3 pm EST |
Alternative Care Approaches: Honoring Authenticity and Vulnerable Expression
Andres Acosta, Gina Ali, and Dandelion Hill | ENROLL |
| Sunday, February 19, 2023 12-3 pm EST |
Building Communities to Meet Crisis: Resourcing our Relationships
Allyson Inez Ford and Jason Sole | ENROLL |
| Sunday, March 12, 2023 12-3 pm EST |
Paradigm Shifters: Transformative Programs Redefining Crisis Care
Amanda Hill and Shanduke McPhatter | ENROLL |
| Sunday, April 16, 2023 12-3 pm EST |
Creating a Crisis Toolkit: Reconciling Personal Values with Professional Ethics
Tami Gatta and Jazmine Russell | ENROLL |
| Sunday, May 7, 2023 12-3 pm EST |
Re-Orienting to Emergency: A Slower Urgency
Cara Page and Susan Raffo | ENROLL |
| Sunday, June 4, 2023 12-3 pm EST |
Embodied Wisdom: A Lived Experience Showcase
Allilsa Fernandez, Chris Huff, Aislinn Pulley, and Jahmil Roberts | ENROLL |
The Crisis Industry:
How Capitalism, Cops, and Coercion Shape Care Today
Sunday, November 13, 12-3 pm EST
optional discussion group: November 20, 12-1:30 PM EST
3 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
The rollout of “988,” the new three-digit number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, has been accompanied by an explosion of attention and criticism regarding the state of crisis care today. Although 988 and similar services convey aspirations to reduce police involvement in mental health crisis, it’s important to be curious and critical regarding their implementation. Hotlines are one service in a wide continuum of crisis care available today, with much of it still funneling into emergency rooms and psychiatric hospitals. Living in times of near-constant political and social crisis, we ask: What kind of care is available to individuals and communities today? What does it look like to demand “better” care, and how do we do it?
This session will explore the current state of crisis services, tracing the ways that capitalism, carceral logics, and coercive interventions have created a minefield for people attempting to access care. Faculty will explore how structural abandonment has created crisis in individuals and communities, and the ways the systemic response reifies oppression. After developing an understanding of the inner workings and politics of the crisis industry, participants will learn to navigate the current system and create community support strategies to get their needs met in the current climate, focusing on healing justice.
Learning objectives:
Identify the parts of the crisis care continuum, how they operate, and the reason people have such disparate experiences with crisis care
Demonstrate how 988 and how federal legislation is changing (and not changing) the crisis industry
Review strategies to protect oneself and clients from cops and coercion while utilizing crisis services
Support ourselves and community members to avoid and survive crisis using community support and healing justice strategies
Jess Stohlmann-Rainey (she/her) is a mad, fat, queer, feminist, care and death worker. She has focused her career on creating pathways to intersectional, justice-based, emotional support for marginalized communities; most notably working across the full continuum of suicide support services from prevention to crisis and postvention and teaching in the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Professional Psychology. She has particular interest in talking/thinking/collaborating about epistemology, capitalism, and ethics in the context of suicidology, mad studies, crisis care, and death work. Jess centers her lived expertise as an ex-patient, voice-hearer, and suicide attempt survivor in her work. She collaborates on a podcast called Suicide ‘n’ Stuff with Dese’Rae Stage from Live Through This. She held the Lived Experience seat on Colorado’s Suicide Prevention Commission from 2081-2021.
Kelechi Ubozoh is a Nigerian-American writer and mental health consultant with over a decade of experience working in the California mental health system in the areas of research and advocacy, community engagement, suicide prevention, and peer support. Her story of surviving a suicide attempt is featured in The S Word documentary, O, The Oprah Magazine and CBS This Morning with Gayle King. She has spent the last two years facilitating healing-centered spaces for BIPOC employees. Her book with LD Green, We’ve Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health, elevates marginalized voices of lived experience who have endured psychiatric mistreatment is featured in the curriculum at Boston University. More at kelechiubozoh.com.
Shifting Mindset to Shift Practice:
Visions for a Liberated Crisis Response
Sunday, December 11, 12-3 pm EST
optional discussion group: December 18, 12-1:30 PM EST
3 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
Many of the dominant approaches to mental health crisis response today are rooted in mindsets that can be unhelpful, or even harmful, to those we seek to support. These approaches can often be traced to our socialization within a society and culture shaped by white supremacy. For example, moments of crisis often perpetuate a sense of urgency, prioritizing “quick fixes” at the expense of exploring root causes or engaging in collaborative problem solving with the person in crisis. Individualized approaches to mental health crisis can lead to isolation and competition, rather than cultivating collective care networks. Operating in environments of fear and liability, mental health professionals often center their own right to comfort over the needs of the person in crisis. Paternalism is at play when the viewpoints or experiences of those in crisis aren’t centered in making decisions related to their care, despite growing understandings that outcomes improve when people with lived experience are treated as genuine partners.
This class invites participants to scrutinize these mindsets, noticing how and where they show up, in order to shift practice. We will discuss how to uproot the characteristics of white supremacy that guide our dominant model of crisis response, and antidotes that make people agents of change rather than passive recipients of care. Grounded in the experiences of faculty who have both been through crisis and helped others navigate it, we will introduce concrete peer support tools that can be deployed in the mental health system and wider communities. Join us to unlearn unhelpful and carceral mentalities and alongside a growing community of people who are committing to meet crisis head on with care, compassion, and understanding.
Learning objectives:
Describe the ways in which white supremacy culture is infused into dominant crisis response techniques
Analyze the power dynamics inherent to the roles of “professional” and “patient” in the mental health system and how to break them down
Detect unhelpful and carceral mentalities and paradigms embedded in dominant crisis response methods
Identify the power of peer support to shift mindset and practice
Integrate alternative crisis response approaches into everyday practice
Ysabel Garcia is a Dominican immigrant, psychiatric survivor, social justice educator, and skilled dialogue facilitator with a bold mission to dive heart first into raw conversations about mental health, equity, and suicide. She shows her endearing sense of humor and ability to talk openly about suicidal experiences through Estoy Aqui LLC, where she helps organizations understand the sociocultural factors that create risk and protection around suicide and mental health in the Latinx and Black communities. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Child Psychology and a Master’s Degree in Public Health from Bay Path University.
Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu (they/she) is a white, queer and non-binary, Disabled, neurodivergent care worker and educator of Ashkenazi Jewish and Boricua ascent. They are rooted in a historical and political lineage of Disability Justice and Mad Liberation; and show up for their communities as the Executive Director of Project LETS, an organizer, parent, doula, peer supporter, writer, and conflict intervention facilitator. Their work specializes in building non-carceral, peer-led mental health care systems that exist outside of the state, reimagining everything we’ve come to learn about mental distress, and supporting care workers in building access-centered, trauma responsive practices that support whole bodymind healing.
Alternative Care Approaches:
Honoring Authenticity and Vulnerable Expression
Sunday, January 15, 12-3 pm EST
optional discussion group: January 22, 12-1:30 PM EST
3 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
Mainstream “crisis care” in the United States is often practiced along a narrow continuum of services, particularly involving hotlines and psychiatric hospitalizations. Many of these programs and practices rely on an overburdened emergency infrastructure and are ensnared with the carceral state – often creating further harm for a person in crisis, rather than healing. Meanwhile, a growing number of alternative tools and practices (e.g. respite centers, warmlines, and peer support) are available to care workers to support individuals and communities experiencing crisis, while simultaneously uplifting their safety, autonomy, and dignity. These offerings help cultivate containers where authentic and vulnerable expression around complex and nuanced human experiences is honored, including those of suicidality and self-harm.
This class will review and define what constitutes an “alternative” care approach, and discuss what these have to offer in a field that tends to respond to crisis by diminishing rights, autonomy, and choice. Deeply rooted in the value of lived experience, the wisdom offered in this session will be sourced from unfiltered perspectives from those who have firsthand experience being harmed while accessing clinical mental health services. Participants will leave this session with concrete strategies, tools, and possibilities to integrate into their life and work, particularly the power of peer support spaces.
Learning objectives:
Define what constitutes an “alternative” or “transformative” mental health practice, locating the power of lived experience
Name the care approaches (e.g. peer support, crisis respite, warmlines) that exist to support people experiencing crisis, without compromising their autonomy
Demonstrate how clinical practices can contribute to further harm for those utilizing mental health services
Identify opportunities and approaches for mental health providers to engage in more affirming and supportive care practices
Andres Acosta is a queer Colombian immigrant and US Navy veteran. He is a graduate of Valencia College and the University of Central Florida where he studied Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Andres was diagnosed HIV positive at 23 and is now devoted to the fight for HIV justice. He serves on the Central Florida HIV planning council and as the Chair of the community advisory board for the Phase 3 HIV vaccine trials in Orlando. He worked as the community relations manager for the Contigo Fund which is the largest funder of LGBTQ+ issues in Central Florida. He has lived experience with the mental health system and is diagnosed with bipolar II, struggles with depression, and has lived with bulimia since he was 14. He is now an education program specialist at the OnePulse foundation and a contractor for peer support space where he is leading the HIV stigma task force for Orange County.
Gina Ali (they/she) is a queer non-binary, Muslim, Egyptian pre-licensed clinician and academic living on the occupied territory of Tongva land (Los Angeles, California). Gina's academic focus is in decolonial psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Their research highlights the functions of how both implicit and explicit coloniality as well as decoloniality exists within online technologies. Their focus has been on exploring oppressive algorithmic functions, liberatory online community building, and how our sense of self is bridged through a digital landscape. Gina runs @gigistherapyworld on TikTok and Instagram where they expand on the importance of deconstructing harmful ideologies in online mental health discourse. Gina is certified in both psychedelic-assisted therapies and EMDR. They are committed to utilizing an interdisciplinary approach which centers the wisdom of ancestral knowledge as well as an abolitionist and disability justice framework.
Dandelion Hill is a Mad, Autistic, Asian American, Bisexual, Genderqueer peer supporter and abolition-centered social worker. They lean on their lived experiences as a survivor of trauma, childhood assault, and adulthood domestic violence as a compassionate framework as they engage with others in their care work. They are a co-founder of Peer Support Space, a collective centered around community care, a humble Advisory Council member of Blue Trunk Community Garden promoting community sustainability and food access, a parent, and enthusiastic gardener. Connect with them and their work on instagram @Dandelion.Hill
Building Communities to Meet Crisis:
Resourcing our Relationships
Sunday, February 19, 12-3 pm EST
optional discussion group: February 26, 12-1:30 PM EST
3 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
How can we build the capacity of our communities to meet a crisis before it arises, and support each other when it does? Too often, crisis intervention is outsourced to carceral systems, which reduce individual autonomy and further reinforce communities’ reliance on these structures. A person in crisis tends to be viewed in isolation, divorced from a wider social context that shapes every aspect of their well-being. By resisting the urge to see crises through an individualized lens, we can recognize the role a community plays before, during, and after a crisis. When we turn toward each other and cultivate networks of support, we can proactively create the conditions necessary for communities to become self-sufficient and meet the needs of a crisis head-on, reducing dependencies on systems that are both overburdened and can lead to more harm than healing.
This class will provide a framework for the importance of community care, grounded in the ancestral wisdom and current practices of Black and Indigenous communities. Faculty members will highlight transformative crisis prevention and intervention practices such as de-escalation, harm reduction, and safety planning – with an emphasis on strengthening interpersonal relationships and practicing mutual aid. Together, we can build community-based models of care that prioritize self-determination, healing, and compassion.
Learning objectives:
Explain how resourced communities are essential to crisis prevention and management, in contrast with police/carceral systems
Analyze why carceral systems are not suited to meet crisis in a healing, transformative, and justice-oriented way
Discuss community-based strategies of what actually works to prevent and cope with crises
Define and practice the exercise of podmapping (Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective), demonstrating how care is practiced in a much larger network across individuals, collectives, organizations, and institutions
Identify tools and resources to build networks of care in your own community
Allyson Inez Ford, LPCC (she/her) is a multiracial, pan, neurodivergent mental health therapist specializing in Eating Disorders, OCD, and Trauma- with lived experience. Allyson is passionate about bringing in concepts of Transformative Justice, Anti-Oppression and Abolitionist care into the mental health space in both theory and praxis. Allyson is rooted in a deeply relational lens and enjoys providing education to community spaces.
Jason Sole (he/they) is a formerly incarcerated abolitionist. He has been a criminal justice educator for 13 years and is currently an adjunct professor at Hamline University in the Criminal Justice & Forensic Science Department. He has facilitated hundreds of circles in jails, prisons, and communities across the nation. Jason is also the co-founder of the Humanize My Hoodie Movement in which he challenges threat perceptions of Black people through clothing, art exhibitions, documentary screenings, and workshops. He is a Core Member of a Relationships Evolving Possibilities (REP) where several abolitionists respond to community harms in the Twin Cities. In addition, he recently launched the Institute of Aspiring Abolitionists for people who’d like to learn more about abolitionist frameworks.
Paradigm Shifters:
Transformative Programs Redefining Crisis Care
Sunday, March 12, 12-3 pm EST
optional discussion group: March 19, 12-1:30 PM EST
3 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
For those of us who are dissatisfied with the current state of mental health services, envisioning (much less actualizing) change can be a daunting endeavor. Systemic transformation requires courageous new perspectives, ideas, and voices to plant the seeds for a future in which people experiencing crisis are met with compassion and curiosity, rather than judgment or fear – and given every opportunity to heal in an affirming community setting. It also necessitates challenging what it means to be an “expert,” and redefining how we understand “success.” But what does the future of community care look like, and who is qualified to build it? How does one grow an idea into a realized vision or program? Where do we begin, and how do we know that we’re the right person to bring our dreams into fruition?
This class will showcase a set of innovative programs that are responding to mental health needs and crises in ways that center the expressed needs of the community and individual, honor dignity, and divest from carceral systems. Although these efforts aren’t always labeled as “mental health” services, they are doing very necessary healing work that meets community members where they are. Faculty will share how they built their programs from the ground up, what they have learned along the way, and share strategies for safe(r) interventions in moments of emerging and acute crisis. They will remind us of the power and expertise we all carry, as well as center how much we have to learn from those whom our society deems to be broken and undeserving of a seat at the table. We invite you to be inspired by the limitless imagination of change-makers who are building new horizons, one idea at a time.
Learning objectives:
Question accepted norms of “expertise” in the mental health field
Identify the key ingredients of what has made the presented mental health programs successful in meeting the needs of those experiencing crisis
Practice de-escalation and safe(r) interventions, including how to determine the seriousness or severity of potential harm
Review how care mapping practices can be used by individuals, families and communities to determine appropriate responses to various crises
Practice trust-building and gaining consent, even in moments of crisis
Amanda Hill is a conjurer of freedom by way of community organizing and energy work. She is a practicing abolitionist working to co-create just - and therefore safe - communities through individual and communal transformative processes. Amanda is a Reiki practitioner who incorporates emotional support and accessible tools such as plant medicines, sound healing, and breath into whole-person wellness.
Shanduke McPhatter is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gangstas Making Astronomical Community Changes Inc. (G.-M.A.C.C. Inc.). This change agent has gained worldwide recognition for his work as a gun violence intervention advocate, gang awareness specialists, and community leader/organizer. Recognized as a contributor to safer communities in New York City by People Magazine, McPhatter’s organization has been credited with creating significant declines in shootings in Brooklyn North and South.
Munira Basir serves as the Grants and Procurement Coordinator at Gangstas Making Astronomical Community Changes Inc. (G-M.A.C.C. Inc.). Prior to joining G-M.A.C.C Inc. Mrs. Basir worked as an elementary school teacher, child care administrator, and a literacy chairperson. Her passion for serving youth is at the core of her desire to work with G-M.A.C.C. Inc. and other community based organizations.
Creating a Crisis Toolkit:
Reconciling Personal Values with Professional Ethics
Sunday, April 16, 12-3 pm EST
optional discussion group: April 23, 12-1:30 PM EST
3 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
Cultures of professionalism in mental health are upheld and maintained through standardized codes of ethics. While these frameworks can aid swift decision making in times of supposed emergency, they can also reinforce cultures of liability that restrict the rights and autonomy of those experiencing distress. In the case of mandated reporting, for example, disclosure of suicidality can lead to forced treatment; although this may guarantee a temporary reprieve for a person in crisis, such measures have also been shown to exacerbate the problems they purport to solve. For those of us who are often caught between personal value systems and the codes of ethics from our fields, these experiences can also leave behind a trail of moral injury.
This class will bring together individuals who bring an abundance of perspectives and experiences to the conversation about how we can practice liberated crisis care, while staying attuned to our values and practicing self-preservation. Oriented to this conversation from multiple vantage points, faculty will share their experiences reconciling personal values with professional codes of ethics, laying the groundwork for strategies that can be adapted to a range of care settings. Participants will be invited to assess their sources of power and potential to cause harm, examine their values, and re-center allyship as a cornerstone of intentional and sustainable healing practices.
Learning objectives:
Analyze power dynamics within helping relationships
Assess the ways in which professional and non-professional helpers can be complicit in causing harm
Identify personal values in order to create a personal ethical framework that can be mobilized in daily life and work
Formulate intentional strategies for allyship in the helping relationship
Design self-preservation rituals to resist burnout
Tami Gatta (she/her) (she/her) is the founder of Tami Gatta Mental Health Counseling (PLLC Pending) and Co-director of Curious Rebels post-graduate drama therapy training. A peer-identified clinician, Tami specializes in trauma, anxiety, depression, blocks in embodiment, and extreme states (sometimes called “psychosis”), as well as meaningful use of self-disclosure, particularly as it pertains to power and privilege. She is the Vice President of the NYC Hearing Voices Network. Tami is a queer psychotherapist dedicated to providing anti-racist, fat empowering and LGBTQ/kink-allied support that celebrates all bodies. Tami commits to an ever evolving practice of humility, curiosity, and self-awareness.
Jazmine Russell is a holistic counselor, mental health educator, certified peer specialist, and trauma survivor. She is the co-founder of the Institute for the Development of Human Arts. After receiving her degree in Applied Psychology from NYU and working in the mental health system as a crisis counselor, she became disillusioned with the system and started organizing with grassroots mental health initiatives in New York. She later became a certified peer specialist working with those who experience extreme and altered states often labeled as ‘psychosis’. Jazmine has been trained in holistic practices such as open dialogue, herbalism, intuitive development, energy work, embodiment work, and other models since 2011, which she uses along with her lived experience of extreme states to help others navigate the healing process. She is also a co-editor of the forthcoming Mad Studies Reader to be published by Routledge in 2023. Find more of her work at www.jazminerussell.com.
*Asantewaa Boykin was originally listed as a faculty member for this session. She wanted to be with us but due to extenuating circumstances, is unfortunately no longer able to join live. Asantewaa is a co-creator of this session's content, and the faculty and wider IDHA team thank her immensely for her contributions.
Re-Orienting to Emergency:
A Slower Urgency
Sunday, May 7, 12-3 pm EST
optional discussion group: May 14, 12-1:30 PM EST
3 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
What is crisis? Where does it come from? Who decides? We have all been socialized to embody a definition of, and reaction to, a “crisis.” While some of this conditioning is easily accessible, other parts live beyond our perceptions within our histories, cells, and ancestral knowings. What shaping forces have been part of our definitions and reactions to “crisis?” Could it be that how we have been taught to think and act in a crisis is itself part of the crisis?*
After many weeks of communally cogitating about crisis in this training series, this class will serve as a pause, a reset, a provocation, and a deep dive into our body-spirit-minds. Participants will be invited to consider the forgotten etymology of the word “crisis” as an opportunity to sieve and document rather than urgently react. We will reflect about how we live individually and collectively in relation to modern notions of crisis. What needs to be unearthed in us? What needs to be composted? In what ways might our inherited sense of crisis be reimagined as opportunity, awakening, even cracks through which new light emerges? The opposite of a question is not always an answer, but a story that leads to re-orientation. In that spirit, this class will sow seeds of new ways of thinking and being together in families, communities, and systems, resourcing us to create spaces where every member is held, honored, safe, connected, settled, and resourced.
*This question/provocation has been posed by Bayo Akomolafe in his essay “A Slower Urgency”
Learning objectives:
Analyze inherited cultural understandings of what crisis is, examining how crisis has shaped personal and communal experiences
Practice what it means to be “ready” for crisis and apply this to particular contexts
Demonstrate an understanding of power/positionality in relationship and locate this sensing within the practice of determining crisis and the layers of relationship that support readiness for it
Integrate body-based practices as a source of knowledge and also to incorporate new learnings into mind, body, and spirit
Cara Page is a Black Queer Feminist cultural/memory worker, curator, and organizer. For the past 30+ years, she has organized with Black, Indigenous and People of Color, Queer/Trans/Lesbian/Gay/ Bi/Intersex/Gender Non-Conforming liberation movements in the US & Global South at the intersections of racial, gender & economic justice, reproductive justice, healing justice and transformative justice. She is leading a new project, Changing Frequencies, an archival/memory and cultural organizing project building power with communities who want to confront, heal from & transform the historical and contemporary exploitative practices and abuses of the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC). She is also co-founder of the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective.
Susan Raffo (she/her) is a writer, cultural worker and bodyworker who does much of her work through the Healing Histories Project, a national project focused on transforming the medical industrial complex, as well as locally as a core group member of REP, a Black-led network showing up to support others in moments of crisis or urgency, with care and respect for the full dignity and autonomy of those in crisis. Raffo is the author of Queerly Classed (1997), Restricted Access (1999), and Liberated to the Bone (forthcoming AK Press: 2022). You can find her writing and other work at www.susanraffo.com.
Embodied Wisdom:
A Lived Experience Showcase
Sunday, June 4, 12-3 pm EST
optional discussion group: June 11, 12-1:30 PM EST
3 CE credits are available for this class. Learn more here.
As is often said, those closest to the problem are closest to the solution. The same is true in the case of mental health crisis response; those who have been through a crisis first hand will always understand “what works” – and what doesn’t – better than anyone else. People with lived experience hold unique and invaluable knowledge when it comes to every step on the continuum of crisis care, from how to create a community that recognizes a crisis, to establishing community support before a crisis happens, to alternative ways of responding.
To end this eight-part series, this class will bring together a group of peers, activists, organizers, and disabled community members who have firsthand experiences of trauma, distress, and crisis, as well as extensive embodied wisdom that accompanies those experiences. Faculty members will share aspects of their stories, with a focus on what they learned and how it informs the work they do today. We will root our exploration in peer support, a liberatory practice that can help create an endoskeleton for the futures we dream of by strengthening our capacities for self and community care. Participants will build critical skills around awareness, empathy, action, and support, and walk away with strategies for how to “be with” those experiencing crisis.
Learning objectives:
Apply peer support values to crisis care work
Practice mindfulness and responsiveness as key tools when navigating crisis
Evaluate how individuals can seek support in your own immediate community
Identify how communities can recognize and intervene in crisis situations, while upholding autonomy, agency, and self-determination
Allilsa Fernandez is a mental health and disability advocate, activist and consultant. They have worked with companies such as Facebook, Lionsgate, Verizon, and ReelAbilities Los Angeles. In addition, they have volunteered with Sylvia Rivera Law Project on shelter organizing, with Met Council on housing justice, and NYC mutual aid providing aid to people across NYC. Allilsa has also worked with diverse organizations, companies, and politicians such as Janos Marton, to create intersectional mental health policies. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Stony Brook University with a bachelors in Psychology, and completed her fellowships with The Coelho Center for Disability Law, Policy and Innovation, and Latino Justice Law Bound. Their work has been featured in Forbes Magazine and the Laura Flanders show.
Aislinn Pulley (she/her, they/them) is a Co-Executive Director at the Center, and a long timer organizer who has worked on a variety of campaigns including the Reparations Now movement to pass the historic 2015 Reparations Ordinance for survivors of CPD torture, campaigns for justice for families who have lost loved ones to police violence, defense campaigns to free political prisoners, and many others. Born and raised in Chicago, Aislinn founded the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter and was the youngest founding member of the cultural non-profit that used art for social change, Insight Arts. She was an organizer with We Charge Genocide, as well as a member of performance ensembles which include Visibility Now, which she founded for young women dedicated to ending sexual assault. Aislinn is an alumnus at Columbia College Chicago having studied graphic arts, and North Park University where she double majored in psychology and sociology.
Jahmil Roberts (name/only) is a community organizer and professional who works to build more satisfying practices of connection for Black people. Jahmil's shifts the ways we relate to one another by encouraging analysis and curiosity while building trust. Jahmil actively creates spaces to name and respond to impacts of systemic harm, and nurture individual and collective growth and healing.
*Chris Huff was originally listed as a faculty member for this culminating session in our series. He wanted to be with us but due to extenuating circumstances, is unfortunately no longer able to join live. Chris is a co-creator of this session's content, and the faculty and wider IDHA team thank him immensely for his contributions.
“"Brilliant ideas, many of them new to me. Good pace, important truths."
—IDHA training participant, cultivating community
Pricing Tiers
What you get: |
Reduced/Member $25/ class |
General $55/ class |
Supporter $79/ class |
| 3-hour live class session | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Class recording and resource list | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Access to IDHA's virtual learning community on Mighty Networks | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Complementary CE credits (3 per class) | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Subsidize another participant and sustain IDHA's ongoing training program | ✓ |
Bundle Pricing
Save more than 30% when you purchase all EIGHT courses in the series!
|
Reduced/Member $200 $135/ 8 classes |
General $440 $300/ 8 classes |
Supporter $640 $440/ 8 classes |
Scholarships
We are also offering full and partial scholarships to the entire series. Our Scholarship Program is for mental health providers, peers, current and prior users of mental health services, and/or activists and advocates who are passionate about transformative mental health practices. POC, LGBTQI, transgender, low-income, disabled persons, and other marginalized groups will be given priority.
Deadline to apply: October 30
Continuing Education Credits
As a training institute that values lived experience as highly as professional training, IDHA recognizes the way that the credentialing system enforces a culture of professionalism and devalues lived experience. At the same time, we believe it is a radical act to offer our training content for CE credits, ensuring that mental health workers and other clinicians can apply transformative mental health knowledge in maintaining a credential.
For this Fall 2022-Spring 2023 series, all eight sessions are eligible for CE credits. CE credits are available to psychologists, psychoanalysts, social workers, counselors and marriage and family therapists, creative arts therapists, chemical dependency counselors, educators, and nurses.
IDHA offers these CE credits (3 credits per class, a $20 value) at the General and Supporter Rate only, for no additional cost. Credits are processed by our staff after the class is over. Certificates are available following course completion at www.ceuregistration.com. For more information about CE credits at IDHA, click here.
Important Note
Licensing Boards change regulations often, and our co-sponsor R. Cassidy Seminars attempts to stay abreast of their most recent changes. If you have questions or concerns about these courses meeting your specific board’s approval, we recommend you contact your board directly to obtain a ruling.
FAQ
What’s unique about IDHA’s approach?
We value lived experience as highly as professional training, so each course will be led by both a mental health clinician as well as someone who identifies as a survivor, a mental health service user, and/or someone who has experienced a mental health crisis. This will ensure participants receive holistic and nuanced perspectives.
Who is this series for?
This course is for mental health professionals, including but not limited to: clinicians, such as psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers, peer specialists, recovery support specialists, housing specialists, nurse practitioners and medical professionals, students. and anyone who works or plans to work with and around people who experience mental health-related issues.
Where are the classes held?
Classes will be held virtually via Zoom. Be sure to download the Zoom software onto your computer in advance of the training!
Are scholarships available?
IDHA will award a set of full and partial scholarship positions to mental health providers, peers, current and prior users of mental health services, and/or activists and advocates who are passionate about transformative mental health practices. POC, LGBTQI, transgender, low-income, disabled persons, and other marginalized groups will be given priority. Learn more about our Scholarship Program here (applications due October 30).
Are these classes accessible?
Live ASL translation and closed captioning will be provided for all five class sessions.
Do I have to show up right at the time advertised for the class?
Yes, this is a live training so please be sure you are available at that time. All sessions will be recorded and shared with registrants after. Please note that all sessions begin at 12pm EST.
Will I have the opportunity to interact with faculty?
Yes, each live training will provide the opportunity to interact with the faculty. You can also interact with many faculty members on Mighty Networks.
What is your cancellation policy?
For any questions or concerns, please email us at contact@idha-nyc.org.
There is no conflict of interest or commercial support for this program.