When Sascha Altman Du Brul was eighteen years old he was locked up in a psychiatric ward for two and a half months. He was told he had a biological brain disease that he would have for the rest of his life and there was little hope for him. But Sascha stepped outside of this view and looked into the history of psychiatry. It was 1980 and the year the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual came out. It was the year human experience was pathologised.
His TEDx talk focusses on the historical and political context that we should all be aware of when we encounter the psychiatric system.
Sascha co-founded The Icarus Project, a support network and media project by and for people who experience the world in ways that are often diagnosed as mental illness. The Icarus Project created a few publications which are FREE to download:
Leaflet to help navigate a mental health crisis
A Madness And Oppression Guide
Harm Reduction Guide To Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs
Sascha works really hard to build an alternative mental health infrastructure that is useful and accessible to a whole lot of different kinds of people and is slowly but surely spreading messages into the mainstream that are going to change the culture and society. He will be in the UK in June 2019 and is open to bookings to speak.
