Angel Adeyoha writes: I was happy to attend the annual NASCO (North American Students of Cooperation) Institute as a representative of TIP. I presented a workshop on "Radical Mental Health on Campus and in the Community through an Anti-Oppression Lens" I have been considering so much lately how my work organizing in explicit anti-oppression circles around topics of race, gender and class converge with my work as a coordinator for TIP. This weekend and this workshop really merged those parallel lines for me.

Icaristas Sam Kendakur, Will Hall, and Bonfire Madigan Shive presented at the Rethinking Psychiatric Crisis: Alternative Responses to First Breaks conference in New York City. They joined more than 200 researchers, people with psychiatric diagnoses, policymakers, clinicians, advocates, and family members from several countries including Finland and the UK to discuss effective hospital, labeling, and force alternatives. Check out the slideshow here, and more info at the International Network Towards Alternatives for Recovery website.

Annie Robinson's article "College Mental Health: A Different Diagnosis" is in Wiretap Magazine, a leading online youth activist website: School health providers are supposed to act in the best interests of the student. But who it is that gets to define these "best interests" is a subject for debate among students and counseling staff.

The Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, published by The Icarus Project and Freedom Center, is now available in German - thanks to the dedicated volunteer translation work of Inez Kochius.

Icarus co-coordinator Annie Robinson just had an essay published in the activist youth web magazine WireTap: Landing With Icarus: Navigating Madness On Campus:

I remember vividly the day I met my first psychiatrist.... She was going to help me find a way to deal with the raging voices that had been telling me to seek control of my life by abusing my body, to quell the debilitating sadness and lethargy that kept me sunken in my bed nearly every day. The fact that my best friend was dying of bone cancer came up, but had little to do with her treatment plan. Eventually she came up the answer: Seroquel. Over the following eight years I was subjected to an onslaught of chemical cocktails corresponding to a long list of diagnoses cast upon me...

River swimming, cross country touring, backyard (vegan) barbecuing,
bicycle rambling, gardening/ harvesting/ gleaning -- summer is here. Late summer, to be precise, which is the fifth season in chinese medicine, with a tempo and mood all its own. The Icarus Project has been spreading and connecting, swarming and flowing in multiple omni-directions over the past four months, gathering and connecting a community of radical-minded visionaries to change the world and nurture mental wellness. Here's a recap and some website art as we enter the last few weeks of glorious summer and welcome the coming fall...

Campus Icarus Project at Evergreen State College organized a week of Mad Pride events June 1-5, including film showings, discussions and presentations, a spoken word gathering, vigil, a string labyrinth in the campus square, acupuncture demonstration, activist strategy, and more...