Surviving Twenty Years in a Psych Hospital & Cultivating Creative Liberation with Artist & Author Issa Ibrahim

What’s it like to spend 20 years locked up in a psychiatric asylum? Issa Ibrahim knows this intimately. As a survivor of complex trauma, drug-induced-psychosis, sexual and institutional abuse, Issa’s story holds up a mirror to America’s racist and coercive mental health system as a microcosm for our sick society. Through it all, Issa is a memoirist and artist, whose subversive provacative art has been shown in numerous galleries and non-profit spaces. Art and compassion were his pathways out of the asylum and continues to be some of his greatest gifts that Issa shares with the world.

“The mental health institutions are a microcosm [for our society]. I discovered that while I was in there. I had a lot of time to think and a lot of time to write and a lot of time to cogitate, a lot of time to try to figure things out. It’s the world reduced, and the world is just as insane and uses top-down management by fear as a mental hospital, you know?”

— Issa Ibrahim, Depth Work Podcast Episode 54

Also in this episode:

healing grief, shame and complex familial trauma
liberatory art practices
surviving institutional abuse in psychiatric institutions and how he got out
how compassion, forgiveness, and self-reflection can be healing

Superhero Holocaust, oil on canvas, Issa Ibrahim

“There’s a friend of mine who says, ‘If you give it away, they can’t take it from you’. Which is just his way of telling me, tell your story. That way they can’t beat you over the head with it and embarrass you. If you give it out and give it away, you’re free.”

— Issa Ibrahim, Depth Work Podcast Episode 54

About Issa Ibrahim:

Issa Ibrahim is a visual artist, author, musician and filmmaker born and raised in Queens, New York. He has exhibited in numerous galleries and non-profit spaces in the greater New York area as well as in group shows at Hofstra University and the Queens Museum of Art in addition to fairs and showcases the Netherlands and South Korea.

Issa has been featured on German Public Television, in the 1999 HBO documentary The Living Museum, by Academy Award winning director Jessica Yu, and the 2015 documentary That Which Is Possible. He **was also the subject of an hour-long NPR audio story that won the 2014 Edward R. Murrow Award for Best News Documentary and the 2014 Third Coast Director’s Choice Award

Issa’s 2016 memoir The Hospital Always Wins, published by Chicago Review Press, has the notable distinction of being the first work published by an African American written from behind the walls of a mental institution. Issa is also a member artist represented by Fountain House Gallery in New York City; the premier gallery dedicated to promoting the artwork of artists with mental health issues.

Issa will continue to use his creativity to challenge preconceived and prejudicial ideas in society, combat stigma, expose the realities of our broken mental health system. He wishes to and explore how openness can aid in respecting psychiatric sufferers and survivors who are our fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, friends, neighbors and ourselves.

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!

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