As the movement for racial justice gains momentum in the United States, there has been a lot of conversation around how to divest funding from the police and reallocate it to mental health care. Although the notion to replace “cops” with “care” is well-intentioned, psychiatric survivors, their family members, and advocates are well acquainted with the oppressive nature of the mental health system. Too often, both mainstream and progressive group discussions immediately revert to a model of "caring" for "the mentally ill" in hospitals and other confined settings that are functionally no different than the jails and prisons that they propose to replace.

IDHA seeks to advance a discussion of alternatives to policing and criminal justice that is rooted in the lived experience of mental health service users and survivors. In this context, it is crucial to center the particular ways in which psychiatry has been used to exert control over Black bodies, not unlike the prison system. From the historically racist roots of diagnosis; to the ways in which the pain of racial oppression is erased or made invisible due to the subjective nature of psychiatric diagnosis; to the significantly higher rates at which Black communities are diagnosed with “serious mental illness,” it’s clear that replacing policing with more mental health care is not the answer.

September 2020

About: With Decarcerating Care: Taking Policing Out of Mental Health Crisis Response, IDHA brought together frontline organizers with a range of perspectives on how to maintain the safety and health of our communities in ways that are free from the police, rooted in survivors' experience, and designed to preserve the rights and autonomy of those in crisis.

Panelists: Asantewaa Boykin, Tim Black, Stella Akua Mensah, Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu, and Neil Gong

Moderator: Noah Gokul

Resources: Watch the event on YouTube in panel view or speaker view; access the closed caption transcript; and view resources specific to this panel conversation.

March 2021

About: With Decarcerating Care: Challenging Criminalization and Control in Mental Health, IDHA deconstructed the prevailing narrative around the decriminalization of mental illness and explored ways in which public mental health services and well-meaning "reforms" inherently uphold the ongoing coercion and control of marginalized communities.

Panelists: Marco Barrios, Dustin Gibson, Victoria Law, Kendra McLaughlin, Yazan Za3za3

Moderator: Grace Ortez

Resources: Watch the event on YouTube in panel view or speaker view; access the closed caption transcript; and view resources specific to this panel conversation.

September 2021

About: With Decarcerating Care: Laying the Foundations for Liberated Practice, IDHA brought together mental health workers, individuals with lived experience, and activists working in and outside of intersecting systems to present concrete steps and tools for decarcerating practice, as well as methods for caring for ourselves in the face of institutional barriers.

Panelists: Erica Woodland, Iresha Picot, Jess Stohlmann-Rainey, Renaya Furtick Wheelan, and Vivianne Guevara

Moderator: Jacqui Johnson

Resources: Watch the event on YouTube in panel view; access the closed caption transcript and view resources specific to this panel conversation.

March 2022

About: With Decarcerating Care: Community-Based Healing Alternatives and How to Build Them, we sought to explore the ways in which white supremacy plays out in the mental health system and movement spaces, and how we can draw upon traditional knowledge and lived experience to create more accountable, effective, and healing-centered alternatives.

Panelists: Aida Manduley, Vesper Moore, Yolo Akili Robinson, Gretchen Rohr, and Anjali Nath Upadhyay

Moderator: Mayowa Obasaju

Resources: Watch the event on YouTube in panel view; access the closed caption transcript and view resources specific to this panel conversation.

Other Events

December 2023

About: With the community event Political Uses of Mental Health Laws in the U.S. and Canada Today, we welcomed back panelists Kelechi Ubozoh and Rob Wipond to delve deeper into how we define and understand “political” uses of psychiatric detention and commitment powers in a contemporary North American context.

Resources: Watch the event on YouTube, and access the closed caption transcript.

Reading

Abolition Across social movements

• Abolition Must Include Psychiatry by Stella Akua Mensah for the Disability Visibility Project

• Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition by Liat Ben-Moshe

• Defund the Police - Invest in Community Care: A Guide to Alternative Mental Health Crisis Responses by Interrupting Criminalization

• Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada by Liat Ben-Moshe

• Disability Justice Is an Essential Part of Abolishing Police and Prisons by TL Lewis

• Madness, Disability, And Abolition: A Call For Movement Solidarity by anonymous

• Madness, Disability And Abolition: Healing In Autonomous Communities by anonymous

• Abolition: A Journal and Community of Radical Theory & Practice

• Prison by Any Other Name by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law

• Reformist Reforms vs. Abolitionist Steps in Policing by Critical Resistance

Colonialism and Psychiatry

• Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

• Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon

Critical Psychiatry

• The hidden costs of the mental-health industry’s expansion by the Seattle Times

• Mental American Monster: The Sprawl of American Psychiatry by Lauren Tenney

Disability and policing

• Black, Disabled and at Risk: The Overlooked Problem of Police Violence Against Americans with Disabilities by Abigail Abrams for TIME

• Disability Rights Activists Take On Twin Pandemics of Racist Police Brutality & COVID-19 by Democracy Now

• “Defunding the Police” and People with Mental Illness by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law

• Police keep using ‘excited delirium’ to justify brutality. It’s junk science. by Méabh O'Hare, Joshua Budhu, and Altaf Saadi for the Washington Post

Disability Justice

• The 10 Principles of Disability Justice by Sins Invalid

• A Disability History of the United States by Kim Nielson

• Care Webs: Experiments in Creating Collective Access by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

• Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

MaD studies

• Madness, Violence, and Power: A Critical Collection edited by Andrea Daley, Lucy Costa, and Peter Beresford

• Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies edited by Brenda A. LeFrancois, Rober Menzies, and Geoffrey Reaume

Mandated Treatment and medication

• Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America by Anthony Ryan Hatch

• Tranquil Prisons: Chemical Incarceration under Community Treatment Orders by Erick Fabris

community and connection

• How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong

Narratives of Lived Experience

• The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny

• The Hospital Always Wins by Issa Ibrahim

• The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn Saks

• The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

• The Color of Hope: People of Color Mental Health Narratives edited by Vanessa Hazzard and Iresha Picot

oppression, identity, and mental health

• Black Madness :: Mad Blackness by Therí Alyce Pickens

• Containing Madness: Gender and ‘Psy’ in Institutional Contexts by Jennifer M. Kilty and Erin Dej

• The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Jonathan Meztl

policing and social work

• Social Workers are Rejecting Calls for Them to Replace Police by Mia Sato for The Appeal

• What Defunding the Police Means for Mental Health by Tyra Bosnic for Teen Vogue

• Why Social Workers Cannot Work With Police by Lori James-Townes for Slate

• We Don’t Need Cops to Become Social Workers: We Need Peer Support + Community Response Networks by Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu

Radical Social Work

• Radical Social Work by Roy Victor Bailey and Mike Brake

• Mandatory Reporting is Not Neutral

Rethinking suicide prevention

• Helping the Suicide Person by Stacey Freedenthal

• Rational Suicide, Irrational Laws by Susan Stefan

• Suicide and Agency:  Anthropological Perspectives on Self-Destruction, Personhood, and Power edited by Ludek Broz and Daniel Münster

• Suicide: Foucault, History, and Truth by Ian Marsh

Roots of mental distress

• Unrecovery Star by Recovery in the Bin

Transformative Justice

• The Fictions and Futures of Transformative Justice by Walidah Imarisha, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, adrienne maree brown, and Mia Mingus

• Steps to End Prisons & Policing: A Mixtape on Transformative Justice by Just Practice Collaborative

• Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Videos and Podcasts

Abolition and decoloniality

• Build Abolition 101 Series by CCSF Collective

• Feral Visions Podcast by Liberation Spring

Radical social work

• Decolonize Social Work Podcast

Community Crisis Response

• We Take Care of Us: Community Crisis Response Webinar Series by Justice Teams Network

Critical Psychiatry

• Dr. James Davies: The Origins of the DSM by the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry

Suicide

• Suicide ‘n’ Stuff Podcast

Trainings and Worksheets

Abolitionist Crisis Response

• An Overview of the "Alternatives to Suicide" Approach

• Skills-Based Crisis Response Training Through a Disability Justice & Abolitionist Lens by Project LETS

disability justice

• Disability Justice Law Syllabus by Dustin Gibson

Community care

• Pod Mapping Worksheet by Mia Mingus

• Transformative Mutual Aid Practices

• Mapping Our Roles in Social Change Ecosystems by Deepa Iyer

Non-Carceral CARE

• Peer Respite Handbook: A Guide to Understanding, Building and Supporting Peer Respites by Intentional Peer Support

• Questions to Ask Your New Care Provider by Dandelion Hill

Peer support

• Black Mental Health and Healing Justice Peer Support Training by BEAM

Rethinking suicide Prevention

• Alternatives to Suicide

• Suicide Prevention Training Series by Estoy Aqui

Systems of Oppression and Mental Health

• Our Struggles are Intertwined: Intersections of Mental Health and Oppression by IDHA

Service Directories

• Abolition Centered Care Provider Database by Dandelion Hill

• Mutual Aid Directory

• Directory of Peer Respites

• Warmline Directory

Resource Compilations and Fact Sheets

• Alternatives to Police in Mental Health Response Fact Sheet by Justice Teams

• Don’t Call the Police - Community-based alternatives in your city

• Emotional + Mental Health Community Resource Guide compiled by Dandelion Hill

• Community accountability, restorative justice, & transformative justice resource list compiled by Aida Manduley

• Mental health resources, crisis hotlines, and strategies for dealing with dysregulation compiled by Aida Manduley

Terms and Definitions

Organizations and Initiatives