Our Team

Peter Stastny is a New York based psychiatrist, documentary film-maker and a co-founder of the International Network toward Alternatives and Recovery. He is a Lecturer at the Global Mental Health Program of Columbia University and until recently was a consultant to the New York City Department of Mental Health in connection with the New York City Parachute Project, a federally-funded project aimed to redesign crisis responses for individuals experiencing acute psychosis and altered states. Peter has frequently collaborated with psychiatric survivors by spearheading peer specialist services and peer-run businesses, as well as in research and writing projects. Examples are a book and traveling exhibition (with Darby Penney) called “The lives they left behind: Suitcases from a state hospital attic” and the edited volume “Alternatives beyond psychiatry"(with Peter Lehmann). Peter has directed several documentary and experimental films, some dealing with the experiences of survival and recovery.

Jazmine Russell is the co-founder of the Institute for the Development of Human Arts, a transformative mental health educator, trauma survivor, and host of "Depth Work: A Holistic Mental Health Podcast." She is an interdisciplinary scholar of Mad Studies, Critical Psychology, and Neuroscience, and a postgraduate student at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. Jazmine has worked in the mental health system as a crisis counselor and later as a peer counselor specializing in working with those experiencing 'psychosis.' Becoming disillusioned with the system, she became a grassroots mental health organizer and holistic counselor across many modalities since 2015. She continues to see clients as a trauma-informed holotropic breathwork practitioner. She is also a co-editor of the forthcoming Mad Studies Reader to be published by Routledge in 2024. Find more of her work at www.jazminerussell.com.

Alisha Ali is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University. Her research focuses on the mental health effects of oppression including violence, racism, discrimination and trauma. She has examined depression and its psychosocial correlates across a range of disadvantaged populations including trauma survivors, clients in poverty transition programs, psychiatric outpatient samples, and immigrant/refugee women. Her current projects are investigating empowerment-based and arts-based programs for domestic violence survivors, low-income high school students, and military veterans. She is the co-editor (with Dana Crowley Jack) of Silencing the Self Across Cultures: Depression and Gender in the Social World, published by Oxford University Press.

Ed Altwies has over ten years of experience in the NYC public mental health system in a variety of settings. He has held multiple key roles in Parachute NYC, initially working on the Early Psychosis Brooklyn team alongside peer specialists. In this capacity he participated in over 500 dialogical network meetings with more than 35 families from a diverse range of cultural backgrounds. He has also worked a consultant to the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in the role of co-trainer with three of the initial Parachute training cohorts and clinical consultant to the Bronx and Queens Parachute teams. He is currently the program manger for the Queens Parachute team and has recently organized and led a 16-day training in dialogical network practices at the Prevention and Recovery Early Psychosis Program (PREP) in Holyoke, MA. Beginning in 2011 he completed two years of training at the Institute for Dialogic Practice in North Hampton, MA. Before earning his Psy.D. at Rutgers University, he worked as a business consultant and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa.

Noel Hunter is a clinical psychologist, specializing in a psychosocial approach to emotional distress. Her work focuses on the link between trauma and altered states, human rights, and alternative approaches to healing. She is the author of Trauma and Madness in Mental Health Services (Palgrave, 2018), and is a passionate advocate for alternatives to the current mainstream biomedical approach to human suffering. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook. www.noelrhunter.com

Issa Ibrahim is an artist, musician, writer, activist and 20 year artist-in-residence at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center’s Living Museum. Author of the memoir The Hospital Always Wins, published by Chicago Review Press in 2016, Issa is also an award winning filmmaker for his autobiographical musical documentary Patient’s Rites, and has been featured on German Public Television, an HBO documentary, an Edward R. Murrow and Third Coast award winning NPR audio story as well as participating in numerous art and mental health exhibitions the world over. Issa has presented at Pratt Institute, CUNY Grad Center, the New York State Psychological Association Annual Convention, Yale University, and mental health forums in Montreal and The Netherlands. Issa hopes to continue the dialogue about preconceived and prejudicial ideas in society, stigma, the realities of the mental health system and how openness can aid in respecting psychiatric sufferers and survivors who are our fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, friends, neighbors and ourselves.