About This Event
• Date: Wednesday, March 6th 2024
• Time: 3:00 PM Pacific | 4:00 PM Mountain | 5:00 PM Central | 6:00 PM Eastern & Atlantic Standard | 6:00 AM Eastern Australia | 7:00 PM Brazil Standard | 11:00 PM UK
• Platform: Zoom
• Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82375518189
About the Topic
From SAFE‘s official website:
“Survivors And Families Empowered (SAFE) is a coalition of psychiatric survivors, families, and mental health professionals who believe in the power of hope and the resilience of the human spirit.
We offer support services and resources that foster hope in recovery from extreme mental states or challenging emotional experiences without forced or toxic treatments.
Our experiences have taught us that deconstructing the fears and myths about mental illness will reduce the over reliance on restrictive interventions which interfere with recovery.”
About Your Presenters: SAFE’s Steering Committee
Ron Bassman, PhD (Colorado)
At the age of 22, Ron was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution for six months where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and subjected to massive doses of Thorazine and Stelizine along with a series of 40 insulin-induced comas and electroshock.
Three years later when he was stronger, he returned to graduate school, earned a PhD in psychology, and became a licensed psychologist. His written works include the book A Fight to Be: Experiences from Both Sides of the Locked Door and an article titled “Never Give Up,” which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Psychosis in 2012 and voted by subscribers as its best article of the year. Ron’s current work centers on community inclusion and social justice. S.A.F.E is his newest project.
Kristina “KK” Kapp (Ohio)
KK has been a human rights advocate with a compassionate heart for 24 years and counting. In addition to serving as the Chair of Ohio’s Protection & Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness (PAIMI) and the Vice President of the National Association for Rights Protection & Advocacy (NARPA), she is honored to serve on the Board of Directors of Disablity Rights Ohio (DRO), the Steering Committee of Liberators for Justice (L4J), and the Mental Health Subcommittee of the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL).
She has created a beautiful masterpiece of the adversity with which life has presented her, passing on the strength and wisdom she gained through her experiences and choosing to view her disability and trauma as an opportunity to learn, grow, and raise the bar to a standard above and beyond the box of conventional societal limitations contrary to the standard way of limited thinking that neurodiversity defines who we are.
KK superseded chromosomal birth defects, childhood prognoses, and expectations that she would live life within the walls of institutions by tapping her well of human potential to bring forth a spring of hope for herself and others as well as a passion for advocacy upon which she built her future. She is proud to live her life out loud without hesitation.
Dr. Peter Stastny, MD (New York)
Peter was born in Vienna, Austria, where he graduated from medical school in 1976. Since 1978 he has been working and residing in New York City. For nearly 30 years he was on the faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and has conducted several publicly funded research projects around vocational rehabilitation, social support, and self-help.
Currently, Peter is working on the development of alternative services that supplement or replace traditional psychiatric intervention and offer autonomous paths towards recovery and full integration. Recently, he has spearheaded Parachute New York, a federally-funded project to provide crisis alternatives in New York City. These activities have engendered a close collaboration with the user-survivor movement, as manifested by joint research projects, publications, service demonstrations, and community work.
Peter has also worked as an expert witness on numerous legal actions against psychiatric hospitals and practitioners for issues relating to involuntary commitment and alleged harm sustained by the defendants. He is a founding member of the International Network Toward Alternatives and Rights-based Supports (INTAR), the Institute for the Development of the Human Arts (IDHA), and Reimagining Psychiatry Network. Peter has also directed several documentary films related to mental health and the Shoah. In the clinical realm, Peter worked as a psychiatrist for state-operated inpatient and outpatient services, as well as for the NYU and Pratt Institute student counseling centers. He is in private practice in Chelsea, New York.
About Judi’s Room
Named after celebrated human rights activist Judi Chamberlin, Judi’s Room is a free event presented jointly by MindFreedom International (MFI) and I Love You, Lead On to facilitate opportunities for ongoing cross-disability dialogue. It typically begins with a presentation by one or more expert panelists followed by an open public discussion.
If you require accommodation for this event such as sign-language interpretation, please notify us in advance at office@mindfreedom.org.
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A recording of this event will later be posted on MFI’s official YouTube channel.