Narrative Healing: Reclaiming Your Story & the Power of Cross-Movement Organizing in Mental Health with Jessie Roth
It takes courage to own your story, especially for trauma survivors. Jessie Roth shows us, in this episode, the power of storytelling, showing up as your full self with the multiple roles and identities you hold and why it’s important to intentionally straddle frameworks to re-story your experiences as a form of healing. As the director of The Institute for the Development of Human Arts, she’s also a master at facilitating cross-movement knowledge building at the intersections of mental health and social justice.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
how to advocate as a family member of someone with mental health concerns
why “being a voice for the voiceless” gets a lot wrong about autonomy and decision-making in mental health
what it means to “decarcerate mental health care” and why it’s crucial
how to build power within and across multiple movements for liberation
About Jessie Roth:
Jessie Roth is a writer and movement organizer with more than a decade of experience at the intersection of mental health and social justice. She is the Director of the Institute for the Development of Human Arts (IDHA), a transformative mental health training institute bringing together mental health workers, peers, survivors, activists, artists, and other advocates for education and community development. Inspired by personal and family mental health experiences, Jessie’s work is focused on the healing power of storytelling and the importance of cross-movement organizing for mental health liberation. A longtime IDHA member, Jessie supported the development of initiatives such as Mental Health Trialogue, a forum bridging the perspectives of peers, family members, and providers; and Decarcerating Care, an ongoing panel series discussing the carceral nature of the mental health system, rooted in the voices and experiences of survivors. Her writing has been published in We've Been Too Patient: An Anthology of Voices from Radical Mental Health, the Intima Journal of Narrative Medicine, and the Village Voice. She is also an avid home cook, passionate about the power of cooking as a care-centered creative practice.
DEPTH Work - A Holistic Mental Health Podcast
This is a space for those who love to dive into the underbelly, to revel in the mystery, question assumptions about what is normal, play in both/and, and honour the wide range of human emotions.
As a complex trauma survivor, holistic counsellor and co-founder of a mental health institute, I learned that there is immense wisdom in our pain and what we call crazy is just what we are yet not willing to understand and explore. Let’s dive in!
Resources:
Institute for the Development of Human Arts: https://idha-nyc.org/
Crossroads of Crisis series: https://www.idha-nyc.org/crossroads-of-crisis
Decarcerating Care: https://www.idha-nyc.org/decarcerating-care
New resource list on Community Care, Not Coercion: https://www.idha-nyc.org/community-care
Become a member: https://idha-nyc.org/membership
Research/Articles :The Power of Speaking for Others by Linda Alcoff: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1354221
Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work: https://www.naasw.com/
988 suicide hotline: What activists are saying: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/08/04/988-suicide-hotline-national-mental-health-activists-issues/10238276002/ *(Stef and I are both quoted)
And Now They Are Coming for the Unhoused: The Long Push to Expand Involuntary Treatment in America: https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/12/unhoused-expand-involuntary-treatment/