'A Better Normal' Conversation with the Authors of 'We've Been Too Patient' - Friday, February 26th | California PACEs Action (CA)

Please join us for our next episode of our ‘A Better Normal’ Community Discussion where we envision the future as trauma-informed!

We are honored to be joined by the authors and editors of ‘We've Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health--Stories and Research Challenging the Biomedical Model’, Kelechi Ubozoh and L.D. Green. Hosted by @Jenna Quinn and facilitated by @Alison Cebulla of ACEs Connection.

Friday, February 26th, 2021
12pm PT // 1pm MT // 2pm CT // 3pm ET
Click here to register for the Zoom Conversation

As a young adult in the United States who struggles with their own mental health and well being, it was impossible not to relate to the deeply personal stories of mental illness and recovery shared by the authors featured in this book. Most who have ever sought help in our broken healthcare system can relate to the feelings we accumulate when we are being bounced around from provider to provider and treatment after treatment. At its worst, our healthcare “system” does more damage than good, especially due to a lack of understanding about the forces of trauma: racial, gender, familial, cultural, and historical. With the over-reliance on medicating and treating the specific instead of the whole human who exists in an interconnected web of society, it can feel like the conventional medicine being offered to us is keeping us sick. Because the editors have curated a collection of essays that focus on solutions and what’s worked, the stories of survival and ultimately, triumph, were inspiring, despite the moments of despair, abuse, and neglect being shared. I was inspired by the perseverance of the individuals who chose to share their stories.

One of the missions of ACEs Connection is to cultivate resilience and equanimity by sharing the truth of our stories, celebrating our lessons learned and our successes. Each personal narrative in We’ve Been Too Patient highlights the many failures of and barriers in our system, yet each author was able to find resilience and wellness by cobbling together a combination of self-determination and what we know here at ACEs Connection to be so healing: community support. The vulnerable stories of survivors must continue to be honored and celebrated—to heal individuals, communities, and ultimately, our broken healthcare system and the society that created it. I am so pleased that we will be able to continue the conversation within the ACEs Connection Community as we are joined by the authors and editors, LD Green and Kelechi Ubozoh, to continue telling authentic stories.

About the book: Overly medicating minors, police brutality, electro-convulsive therapy, involuntary hospitalization--not to mention the traumas that lead to intense altered states and suicidal thoughts: these are the struggles of those who are labeled mentally ill. Much has been written about the problems of the mental health care system, but in this book, we give voice to those who have endured psychiatric “care” themselves. But these stories are not without hope, and many speak to radical healing in the form of mutual aid, peer support, spirituality, art, and story itself. As Robert Whitaker suggests in his foreword to our book, the current psychiatric system believes in the “magic bullets” of pharmacological drugs and dehumanizing diagnoses. There are no magic bullets, no single story. From the Mad Pride movement to the Consumer Movement to trauma-informed care, mental health care stands to be radically revised by this multitude of voices.

Published by North Atlantic Books

Distributed by Penguin Random House

Click here to register for the Zoom Conversation

KELECHI UBOZOH is a Nigerian-American writer, mental health advocate, and facilitator with nearly a decade of experience working in the California mental health system in the areas of research and advocacy, community engagement, stigma reduction, and peer support. She is featured inThe S Word documentary (now available on Amazon Prime) which follows the lives of suicide attempt survivors in attempt to interrupt the silence and stigma around suicide and promote connectivity and healing. Her story of recovery is featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, CBS This Morning with Gayle King. Her first book with LD Green, We’ve Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health, was released in 2019. Kelechi sits on the advisory board of JASPR Health and provides content expertise. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, JASPR Health has developed a tablet-based application to help people who are suicidal while they wait in emergency departments. Last year, she presented at the Yale School's inaugural Mental Health Symposium and dedicated her time to facilitating healing-centered spaces for black employees internationally to respond to the ongoing racialized violence toward the black community. Currently, Kelechi is a consultant working with clients dedicated to transforming mental health, substance use services, as well as justice system reform and workforce development.

Links:

S WORD on AMAZON---https://kelechiubozoh.com/2020...hind-the-documentary

Reimagining Self Care for Black Folks Blog: https://kelechiubozoh.com/2020...imagining-self-care/

Yale Mental Health Symposium- Hospital Panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...amp;feature=youtu.be

LD GREEN is a non-binary writer, performer, college educator, and mental health advocate living in Richmond, California. Their work has been published on Salon, The Body is Not an Apology, Sinister Wisdom, PULP, Foglifter, sPARKLE + bLINK, on truth-out.org and elsewhere. They have featured at dozens of reading series, slams, showcases, and workshops in schools, colleges, and open mics locally and across the country. As a playwright and writer/performer, they have had their work performed at multiple local and national theater festivals. LD received their BA from Vassar College and their MFA from Mills College in Creative Writing. They have received fellowships for their writing from Lambda Literary, Tin House, and Catwalk Artists' Colony. They co-edited and contributed to the anthology We’ve Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health, with Kelechi Ubozoh, published by North Atlantic Books in 2019. A collection of their poetry and creative non-fiction is forthcoming from Nomadic Press. They are a semifinalist in the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Competition. LD is Assistant Professor of English at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, California where they teach composition, creative writing, and literature.