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Thursday 18th April 2024

6pm BST, 10am PDT, 1pm EDT, 3am AEST

Suicidal feelings are surrounded by fear, taboo, and misunderstanding. Communities are often judgmental and encouraged to report suicidal feelings to mental health professionals, while the standard of care in behavioral health emphasizes rapid risk assessment and medical intervention. Does this professionalized approach truly support people and prevent suicide? Or do professionals and treatment make suicidal feelings worse? What are new ways to respond and live with suicidal feelings?

When someone's pain is so great they express a desire to die, they risk intrusive mental health interventions. Though intended to help, police and forced hospitalization may end up doing more harm. And many people afraid of forced treatments learn to hide their suicidal feelings – further isolating them from support. How can suicide prevention really help people - and also embrace human rights?

This training will help overcome fear surrounding suicidal feelings, empower us to speak more openly, give us concrete tools for engaging ourselves and others, and prepare us to transform organizational cultures and community responses to suicidal feelings. Committed to living, Will is also someone who lives with suicidal feelings, and he calls for community inclusion of people facing these taboo experiences.

A CPD certificate for 2.5 hours will be available on request after the workshop.

This workshop will be recorded and a closed youtube link will be available to delegates.

About Will

Will's bio and details here are taken from his website and in the first person. For more info about Wills amazing work please visit willhall.net

How can we liberate ourselves — and truly care for each other?

I am a counselor and facilitator working with individuals, couples, families and groups via phone and web video. I have taught and consulted on mental health, trauma, psychosis, medications, domestic violence, conflict resolution, and organizational development in more than 30 countries, and been widely featured in the media for my advocacy efforts around mental health care. My work and learning arise from my own experiences of recovery from madness, and today I am passionate about new visions of mind and what it means to be human.

I hold a Diploma and Masters Degree in Process Work from the Process Work Institute, a Jungian counseling school, and my study over the years has included training with Jaakko Seikkula and colleagues in Open Dialogue at the Institute for Dialogic Practice, the WRAP facilitators’ training, certification in NADA protocol auricular acupuncture at Lincoln Recovery in New York City, and the Integral Counseling program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. I am currently a PhD candidate at Maastricht University Medical Center – School for Mental Health and Neuroscience, supervised by Dr. Jim van Os. My work as a therapist and group facilitator has focused especially on trauma, oppression, and working with extreme states of consciousness that get diagnosed as psychosis; my PhD research is focusing on psychiatric medications and alternatives. I also have extensive background in community organizing and organizational development, and see “mental health” as a community and social issue.

As my experience has grown in working with alternative mental health, trauma, and medication empowerment, I have been invited to present and teach groups in a variety of settings. I have consulted and presented for more than 50 organizations in over 30 countries, including the Federal Office on Violence Against Women, the American Psychiatric Association Institute on Psychiatric Services, the Alaska Peer Mental Health Consortium, Menninger Clinic, Alaska Governor’s Council on Disabilities, International Network Towards Alternatives for Recovery, Oregon Health and Sciences University, New York University Gallatin School, Hearing Voices Congress, International Association of Process Oriented Psychology, New Avenues for Youth, University of Massachusetts Nursing School, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Mental Disability Rights International, Western MA Recovery Learning Community. Heart and Soul Alameda County, Portland State University School for Social Work, Smith College School of Social Work, Sigmund Freud University – Vienna Austria and Ljubljana Slovenia, Multnomah County Department of Community Justice, Empowerment Initiatives, and many more.

I have been widely interviewed and featured in the media, including New York Times “Revisiting Schizophrenia: Are Drugs Always Needed?, Radio New Zealand, National Public Radio, Newsweek magazine “Listening to Madness”, Forbes magazine, Forbes philanthropy, in the books Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologists Search for the Meanings In Madness, Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon, Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers, and Rebels, by Alissa Quart, and Show Me All Your Scars: True Stories of Living With Mental Illness chapter by Susie Meserve. I have written extensively on mental health, social justice, and environmental issues, including in my book Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness, the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Medications, Research Ethics journal, the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, in Best Practices in Mental Health: An International Journal, Turning Wheel: Journal of Engaged Buddhism, Adbusters: Journal of the Mental Environment, a profile in Research Outreach magazine, the Sierra Club anthology Call To Action: Peace, Justice, and Ecology, Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness, as investigator and co-author on the 2010 Mental Disability Rights International Report on Mexico, a chapter in Way Out Of Madness, and a chapter in the Oxford University Press textbook Modern Community Mental Health: An Interdisciplinary Approach. I’ve appeared in the films Healing Voices, Crazywise, and Coming Off Psych Drugs: A Meeting Of Minds. My radio show Madness Radio: Voices And Visions from Outside Mental Health was profiled in the UK Guardian newspaper and has more than 200 episodes.

MORE ABOUT MY BACKGROUND:

I grew up in an artistic family that cultivated my creativity and imagination; I was a magician and performer as a kid, and games and books enthralled me. In school I became an outsider, pulled between my love of learning and my differences from other students. Growing up in a family haunted by war and trauma, my sensitivity turned towards self-preservation, as I tried to make sense of the racial, class, and gender confIicts that surrounded me in the South. My father is a Korean War veteran and psychiatric survivor, and my mother is of mixed race Choctaw Indian descent and was orphaned as a girl. This challenging context ignited a lifelong personal search to embrace both the vastness of my imaginary worlds and the urgency of social justice and healing.

As a teenager I became a community organizer in the peace, ecology, and anti-racism movements, but the traumas of my childhood and longtime struggles with emotional distress landed me in a psychiatric hospital at age 26. After a difficult year in San Francisco’s public mental health system, I slowly over 15 years on a disability status learned to live with and care for my madness by stepping away from diagnosis and meds and embracing human connection, holistic health, and spiritual practice. That recovery process inspired me to found and worked with several community organizations, to promote mental health alternatives and help others.

Today I teach what I have learned and use my experience to help guide people to their own discoveries of healing, as a counselor, through my writing, leading trainings, and consulting with organizations. My exploration led me to study Process Work and earn a Diploma in this Jung and systems based approach to human experience, as well as studying Open Dialogue with Jaakko Seikkula and colleagues. I am actively involved in creating a new vision of mental health based on understanding the meaningfulness of what gets labeled as psychosis and madness. I am passionate about mental diversity and welcoming different states of consciousness as vital parts of the human community.

A longtime meditator and yoga practitioner, I love books, bicycling, and being in nature, and am an avid runner and role playing gamer. I am deeply moved by the mystery, suffering, and potentials of what it is to be a human on planet earth, and strive for a way everyone, no matter where our minds take us, can find a way home.

PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT WORK:

PhD candidate, Maastricht University Medical Center – School for Mental Health and Neuroscience.

Madness Radio the Pacifica FM community radio show I host, based at KBOO FM in Oregon

Institute for Dialogic Practice where I completed a two year certificate in Open Dialogue

Portland Hearing Voices a mental diversity group in Portland Oregon I am Director

International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal, faculty member

Mad In America, Robert Whitaker’s web magazine, where I am a blogger

Slovakia Institute of Process Oriented Psychology graduate school, adjunct Faculty

Sigmund Freud University Ljubljana Slovenia, visting lecturer

Process Work Center of Portland graduate school based in Jung where I hold a Diploma and Masters Degree

Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care, past founding Board member

Freedom Center the Northampton MA support community I co-founded

The Icarus Project former co-coordinator and longtime organizer

Disability Rights International consulting in Argentina, Peru, and Mexico

International Network Towards Alternatives for Recovery, past Board member

Valley Free Radio Northampton’s community FM radio station I initiated with Ed Russell

Mental Health Association of Portland past Board member

Hearing Voices Network USA where I am a founding member and ongoing collaborator

PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION MEMBERSHIPS:

International Society for the Psychological Study of Schizophrenia and Psychosis

American Counseling Association

National Acupuncture Detoxification Association

International Hearing Voices Network

Julian Jaynes Society

International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry

Process Work Institute Diplomate Alumni Society

International Association for Process Oriented Psychology

International Network Towards Alternatives For Recovery

Hearing Voices Network USA

CMS National Provider Plan System NPI 1265808976

AWARDS:

Judi Chamberlin Advocacy Award, National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery

Disability Advocacy Award, Stavros Center for Independent Living, Amherst MA

Portland Oregon Open Minds Open Doors Award

Smith College School for Social Work Graduating Class gift

Forbes Magazine feature philanthropic initiative

“When I was growing up, I wanted to be a magician,” remembers Hall. “Then I wanted to be a biologist, then I wanted to be a psychologist, then I wanted to be a community organizer, then I wanted to be a philosopher. Now I’m sort of all of them.”

— Interview in the Portland Mercury newspaper, June 2009.

“Hall remains articulate, impassioned, and unmedicated…”

— Profile in Newsweek Magazine, May 2009.

“Hall’s style is equally comforting and intense”

— Publisher’s Weekly 2022 Booklife Prize Nonfiction Finalist