Book Sascha

Calling all friends and allies in the UK – I’m coming to visit in June for the first time and looking for speaking gigs!

Hi there, my name is Sascha and I’ve been working on creating alternatives to the mainstream model of mental illness for a lot of years now. I’ve spent a lot of time in and out of the psychiatric system, as a patient, as an advocate and as a trainer. I’m really interested in coalition building, in capturing people’s imaginations with creative ideas, and in shifting public perceptions of mental illness/wellness.  Popular education is one of the great loves of my life and I have a really strong faith in the power of groups of people to effect change in this crazy world.

My friends and I created The Icarus Project back in 2002 and it has opened up a lot of space for creative ways of rethinking the disease model. It has also brought a lot of wonderful people together to support each other.
For the last bunch of years I’ve been working in the public mental health system developing trainings for the peer specialist workforce and doing my best to push against the forces of biopsychiaitry and mediocrity. I’ve also been building a radical training institute in New York City for mental health workers with a bunch of really creative and inspiring people.

I’m planning on visiting the UK in early June to speak at Cambridge University

(June 6th to be exact) and I’m interested in meeting others in the UK and on the mainland of Europe who are actively working inside and outside of the system to make the world better.

Are you interested in booking me to come speak at your school or your mental health institution? That’s great, because I am available for speaking engagements (keynotes, panels, book readings, workshop facilitation etc.) on a wide variety of topics. I’m also just interested in making new friends and contacts for our training institute. Please reach out to me and invite me to something interesting, special points if you can help me fund my travels as I am about to leave my job in the system and will be needing to save money.

Here are some topics I love discussing, and I have a lot of material share on all of them:

Here’s my most recent bio:

Sascha Altman DuBrul is the co-founder of the Icarus Project (www.theicarusproject.net), a network of peer based mental health support groups and media project that is actively redefining the language and culture of mental health and illness. He has a Masters in Social Work and worked from 2016-2019 as a Recovery Specialist and Trainer at Columbia’s Center for Practice Innovations at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.  He is currently the Training Director for the Institute for the Development of Human Arts (www.idha-nyc.org) He is the co-author of Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness, Friends Make the Best Medicine: A Guide to Creating Community Mental Health Support Networks, and the author of Maps to the Other Side: The Adventures of a Bipolar Cartographer. Sascha’s intellectual and creative interests lie at the intersection of the public mental heath system and the Mad Underground. (www.mapstotheotherside.net)

Send me an email!

sascha@mapstotherside.net

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