Meeting Register Page

Mad Movement Histories

In this participatory virtual workshop, we’ll explore mad* movement histories through themes of resistance to oppression and building alternative supports, as well as through the lenses of racial, disability, economic, and gender justice. We will look at and discuss some primary sources, and there may be short assignments in advance of our sessions.

*including ex-patients, psychiatric survivors, psychiatrically labeled/disabled, neurodivergent, experiencing extreme states, marginalized by sanism, and many more self-described identities

This training is fairly interactive, so think about what you'll need to stay present and engaged throughout each session. We recommend that folks join via laptop, desktop, or tablet as smart phones are harder to navigate for this kind of interactive training. We ask that participants have cameras on for the majority of the time, though understand if you need to be off camera for a short amount of time. If you have any accessibility needs, please let us know on the registration form.

Participants will:

+Investigate events and conditions that led to the current uneasy cooperation between consumers/survivors and mental health services agencies
+Gain perspectives beyond the medical model of mental illness, including the social model of disability
+Understand the medical model as just one way of understanding emotional distress, an ideology that has displaced many cultural and traditional ways of making meaning
+Recognize instances of the power struggle between “expert knowledge” and the self-determination and autonomy of the subjects of that knowledge
+Examine ways in which “expert knowledge” has been employed to benefit certain people and exclude others from those benefits

This training is free of charge to participants and sponsored by Vermont's Peer Workforce Development Initiative.

Training Schedule:
Tuesday April 4th & Thursday April 6th, 12:30pm-4:30pm ET each day. We will take two 15-minute breaks during each session.